Joystick

Interview with stephenen Oskui

A look inside twisted pixel games

Halo: reach and Call of Duty: Black Ops game review

How to pick a processor

JoyStick

Dear readers, We, the editors, want to thank you for reading our magazine. We hope you enjoy reading this magazine as much as we enjoyed making it. We put a lot of time and effort in to this to tailor it specifically for the people we love, the people who love technology. This is an experimental run at trying to create a magazine. We apologize in advance that this is both our first and last edition of this magazine.

Letter from the editorLetter from the editor

Pg. 1 Letter from the editorPg. 3 Meet the writersPg. 6 Stephen Oskoui interviewPg. 8 Which processer is right for me?Pg. 10 The sale of violent video gamesPg. 11 Learning while playing video gamesPg. 13 Call of Duty: Black Ops reviewPg. 15 Halo: Reach reviewPg. 17 A different kind of arcadePg. 19 VirusPg. 21 How to stop the digital duct tape

ContentsContents

JoyStick

Letter from the editorLetter from the editor

Carlos A.-PS3 Owner•

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare •

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare2•

Call of Duty: Black ops•

K/D in Black ops 1.45•

Austin C.-X-Box 360 Owner•

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare•

Call of duty: Modern Warfare 2•

Call of duty: Black ops•


Halo:Reach-Favorite gun is the sniper•

Meet the writersMeet the writers

Carlos A.-PS3 Owner•

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare •

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare2•

Call of Duty: Black ops•


Austin C.-X-Box 360 Owner•

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare•

Call of duty: Modern Warfare 2•

Call of duty: Black ops•


Halo:Reach-Favorite gun is the sniper•

Ravi-Enjoys Computer programming•

Computer enthusiest •

Good with Tech support •

Ubuntu user•

ww

Stephen Oskoui

Friday morning I get a call confirming an interview with the CEO of the fastest growing technology companies in Texas. I was invited to join their Halloween party that day to meet some people and to interview Stephen Oskoui, the CEO of Austin-based Smiley Media. I walked into their office and a whole new atmosphere washed over me. The place was very calm and people were just social-izing already at 4:30 in the afternoon – just as you would expect in an cool and hip Internet ad-vertising firm. After walking around and being introduced to everybody, I met my contact, Rhonda Allen, the Senior Director of Human Potential, who introduced me to Stephen (decked out as Andy Warhol for the Halloween party) who walked me to what looked like a wall of books. He casually pulled “The Plains of Passage” off the shelf revealing a secret meeting room and I settle down to hear him tell me his story.Stephen is thirty years old running a multi-million dollar Internet advertising start up that he cre-ated nine years ago after leaving Stanford to pursue his childhood dream of becoming an entre-preneur.Stephen started his entrepreneurial career at the very young age of 13 when he realized that he had an interest in video games.”I spent all of my allowance and the money I made baby sitting and money mowing lawns buying video games”Stephen then started posting his opinions of the video games on America Online (anyone remem-ber AOL?). Soon tiring of just posting his opinions on AOL he had an idea. “If I put all of my thoughts of these games together and made a newsletter maybe I could convince the video game companies to send me free review copies.”Stephen then went around to all of his friends and asked if they were interested in getting his newsletter.“And then I got a list of video game companies and just started calling them to see if they would give me free video games”, Stephen says, “Some of them just sent me the free video games, some said that I needed five or ten thousand subscribers before they would do that sort of thing.”Stephen started asking people on AOL if they wanted to read his newsletter until he got the num-ber that he needed to get the free video games.“Eventually it worked and I got hundreds of the video games and I gave them to my friends at school if they wrote reviews for my newsletter, because it turns out its hard to write that many reviews of video games.”After getting his newsletter off the ground Stephen had a revelation.“At some point I realized that I enjoyed running this newsletter and making this business more then playing the games themselves. That’s when I decided that I wanted to be an entrepreneur.”Stephen then started reading up on businesses, observing what they did, and other entrepre-neurs.At the time Stephen was living in upstate New York and most of his peers wanted to go to Cornell but Stephen had a different idea of where he wanted to go to school.“When I was talking to all of these video game companies a lot of them were based in Silicon Val-ley and they were telling me that if you wanted to be a entrepreneur, Silicon Valley is where you should go and you should go to Stanford.”Stephen fell in love with Stanford. He applied for early admission, got accepted, and went off to California.“From the time that I decided that I was going to be an entrepreneur I always had a list of ideas that I wanted to brainstorm with people. I was always trying to think of ideas that were extremely powerful that would really scale to significant levels.”Stephen left Stanford not to start Smiley Media, but to start a new kind of cheap cell phone com-pany, Piko, that would provide low cost service in return for word-of-mouth advertising. But the wireless network company that they were partnering with went out of business, so Steve and his

Photo bySmiley Media

Stephen Oskoui

Friday morning I get a call confirming an interview with the CEO of the fastest growing technology companies in Texas. I was invited to join their Halloween party that day to meet some people and to interview Stephen Oskoui, the CEO of Austin-based Smiley Media. I walked into their office and a whole new atmosphere washed over me. The place was very calm and people were just socializing already at 4:30 in the afternoon – just as you would expect in an cool and hip Internet advertising firm. After walking around and being introduced to everybody, I met my contact, Rhonda Allen, the Senior Director of Human Potential, who introduced me to Stephen (decked out as Andy Warhol for the Halloween party) who walked me to what looked like a wall of books. He casually pulled “The Plains of Passage” off the shelf revealing a secret meeting room and I settle down to hear him tell me his story. Stephen is thirty years old running a multi-million dollar Internet advertising start up that he created nine years ago after leaving Stanford to pursue his childhood dream of becoming an entrepreneur. Stephen started his entrepreneurial career at the very young age of 13 when he realized that he had an interest in video games.”I spent all of my allowance and the money I made baby sitting and money mowing lawns buying video games” Stephen then started posting his opinions of the video games on America Online (anyone remember AOL?). Soon tiring of just posting his opinions on AOL he had an idea. “If I put all of my thoughts of these games together and made a newsletter maybe I could convince the video game companies to send me free review copies.” Stephen then went around to all of his friends and asked if they were interested in getting his newsletter. “And then I got a list of video game companies and just started calling them to see if they would give me free video games”, Stephen says, “Some of them just sent me the free video games, some said that I needed five or ten thousand subscribers before they would

do that sort of thing.” Stephen started asking people on AOL if they wanted to read his newsletter until he got the number that he needed to get the free video games. “Eventually it worked and I got hundreds of the video games and I gave them to my friends at school if they wrote reviews for my newsletter, because it turns out its hard to write that many reviews of video games.” After getting his newsletter off the ground Stephen had a revelation. “At some point I realized that I enjoyed running this newsletter and making this business more then playing the games themselves. That’s when I decided that I wanted to be an entrepreneur.” Stephen then started reading up on businesses, observing what they did, and other entrepreneurs. At the time Stephen was living in upstate New York and most of his peers wanted to go to Cornell but Stephen had a different idea of where he wanted to go to school. “When I was talking to all of these video game companies a lot of them were based in Silicon Valley and they were telling me that if you wanted to be a entrepreneur, Silicon Valley is where you should go and you should go to Stanford.” Stephen fell in love with Stanford. He applied for early admission, got accepted, and went off to California. “From the time that I decided that I was going to be an entrepreneur I always had a list of ideas that I wanted to brainstorm with people. I was always trying to think of ideas that were extremely powerful that would really scale to significant levels.” Stephen left Stanford not to start Smiley Media, but to start a new kind of cheap cell phone company, Piko, that would provide low cost service in return for word-of-mouth advertising. But the wireless network company that they were partnering with went out of business, so Steve and his

December 2010 Joystick Photo by Smiley MediaStory By Ravi

ww

Stephen Oskoui

Friday morning I get a call confirming an interview with the CEO of the fastest growing technology companies in Texas. I was invited to join their Halloween party that day to meet some people and to interview Stephen Oskoui, the CEO of Austin-based Smiley Media. I walked into their office and a whole new atmosphere washed over me. The place was very calm and people were just social-izing already at 4:30 in the afternoon – just as you would expect in an cool and hip Internet ad-vertising firm. After walking around and being introduced to everybody, I met my contact, Rhonda Allen, the Senior Director of Human Potential, who introduced me to Stephen (decked out as Andy Warhol for the Halloween party) who walked me to what looked like a wall of books. He casually pulled “The Plains of Passage” off the shelf revealing a secret meeting room and I settle down to hear him tell me his story.Stephen is thirty years old running a multi-million dollar Internet advertising start up that he cre-ated nine years ago after leaving Stanford to pursue his childhood dream of becoming an entre-preneur.Stephen started his entrepreneurial career at the very young age of 13 when he realized that he had an interest in video games.”I spent all of my allowance and the money I made baby sitting and money mowing lawns buying video games”Stephen then started posting his opinions of the video games on America Online (anyone remem-ber AOL?). Soon tiring of just posting his opinions on AOL he had an idea. “If I put all of my thoughts of these games together and made a newsletter maybe I could convince the video game companies to send me free review copies.”Stephen then went around to all of his friends and asked if they were interested in getting his newsletter.“And then I got a list of video game companies and just started calling them to see if they would give me free video games”, Stephen says, “Some of them just sent me the free video games, some said that I needed five or ten thousand subscribers before they would do that sort of thing.”Stephen started asking people on AOL if they wanted to read his newsletter until he got the num-ber that he needed to get the free video games.“Eventually it worked and I got hundreds of the video games and I gave them to my friends at school if they wrote reviews for my newsletter, because it turns out its hard to write that many reviews of video games.”After getting his newsletter off the ground Stephen had a revelation.“At some point I realized that I enjoyed running this newsletter and making this business more then playing the games themselves. That’s when I decided that I wanted to be an entrepreneur.”Stephen then started reading up on businesses, observing what they did, and other entrepre-neurs.At the time Stephen was living in upstate New York and most of his peers wanted to go to Cornell but Stephen had a different idea of where he wanted to go to school.“When I was talking to all of these video game companies a lot of them were based in Silicon Val-ley and they were telling me that if you wanted to be a entrepreneur, Silicon Valley is where you should go and you should go to Stanford.”Stephen fell in love with Stanford. He applied for early admission, got accepted, and went off to California.“From the time that I decided that I was going to be an entrepreneur I always had a list of ideas that I wanted to brainstorm with people. I was always trying to think of ideas that were extremely powerful that would really scale to significant levels.”Stephen left Stanford not to start Smiley Media, but to start a new kind of cheap cell phone com-pany, Piko, that would provide low cost service in return for word-of-mouth advertising. But the wireless network company that they were partnering with went out of business, so Steve and his

Stephen Oskoui

Friday morning I get a call confirming an interview with the CEO of the fastest growing technology companies in Texas. I was invited to join their Halloween party that day to meet some people and to interview Stephen Oskoui, the CEO of Austin-based Smiley Media. I walked into their office and a whole new atmosphere washed over me. The place was very calm and people were just socializing already at 4:30 in the afternoon – just as you would expect in an cool and hip Internet advertising firm. After walking around and being introduced to everybody, I met my contact, Rhonda Allen, the Senior Director of Human Potential, who introduced me to Stephen (decked out as Andy Warhol for the Halloween party) who walked me to what looked like a wall of books. He casually pulled “The Plains of Passage” off the shelf revealing a secret meeting room and I settle down to hear him tell me his story. Stephen is thirty years old running a multi-million dollar Internet advertising start up that he created nine years ago after leaving Stanford to pursue his childhood dream of becoming an entrepreneur. Stephen started his entrepreneurial career at the very young age of 13 when he realized that he had an interest in video games.”I spent all of my allowance and the money I made baby sitting and money mowing lawns buying video games” Stephen then started posting his opinions of the video games on America Online (anyone remember AOL?). Soon tiring of just posting his opinions on AOL he had an idea. “If I put all of my thoughts of these games together and made a newsletter maybe I could convince the video game companies to send me free review copies.” Stephen then went around to all of his friends and asked if they were interested in getting his newsletter. “And then I got a list of video game companies and just started calling them to see if they would give me free video games”, Stephen says, “Some of them just sent me the free video games, some said that I needed five or ten thousand subscribers before they would

do that sort of thing.” Stephen started asking people on AOL if they wanted to read his newsletter until he got the number that he needed to get the free video games. “Eventually it worked and I got hundreds of the video games and I gave them to my friends at school if they wrote reviews for my newsletter, because it turns out its hard to write that many reviews of video games.” After getting his newsletter off the ground Stephen had a revelation. “At some point I realized that I enjoyed running this newsletter and making this business more then playing the games themselves. That’s when I decided that I wanted to be an entrepreneur.” Stephen then started reading up on businesses, observing what they did, and other entrepreneurs. At the time Stephen was living in upstate New York and most of his peers wanted to go to Cornell but Stephen had a different idea of where he wanted to go to school. “When I was talking to all of these video game companies a lot of them were based in Silicon Valley and they were telling me that if you wanted to be a entrepreneur, Silicon Valley is where you should go and you should go to Stanford.” Stephen fell in love with Stanford. He applied for early admission, got accepted, and went off to California. “From the time that I decided that I was going to be an entrepreneur I always had a list of ideas that I wanted to brainstorm with people. I was always trying to think of ideas that were extremely powerful that would really scale to significant levels.” Stephen left Stanford not to start Smiley Media, but to start a new kind of cheap cell phone company, Piko, that would provide low cost service in return for word-of-mouth advertising. But the wireless network company that they were partnering with went out of business, so Steve and his

December 2010 Joystick

6

“To me building and running a company is the most fun kind

of game I could think of.”

partners decided to shut down the company.After this Stephen was eager to prove his ideas on word of mouth advertising. He was convinced that a company could grow by word of mouth advertising. It was a really powerful idea and he believed because if a service grew from word of mouth it could grow to huge proportions. “I then started this little website as an experiment, I gave away free smiley face t-shirts if you told your friends about my website. If five of your friends came back to this website then you got a free smiley face t-shirt. “ “A lot of the secret of making something grow from word of mouth is to make it very easy to share with people. And so what I did is I created all these tools behind the scenes that helped me create thousands or million of variations of every page. I had this thing where if every person that visited this site had one of their friends come back to the site, then it would grow to really huge levels.” Before Stephen went back to Stanford he wanted to complete his experiment of creating a service that grew from word of mouth since he knew that it could easily grow exponentially. It was a tangible goal for him to reach, to prove to himself that his ideas of viral marketing really did work. “After a lot of experimentation, I was right. That site started to grow through word of mouth and eventually millions of people signed up, and when that started to happen I realized that maybe I could turn this into my company. Maybe I don’t have to go back to Stanford just yet.”’ To students that want to follow in Stephen’s footsteps he gives this advice: “The first thing is do is decide if they want to be

entrepreneurs and why. For me I could not imagine doing anything else because the whole act of building a company is so fun. I love doing what I’m doing. I know a lot of people that talk about entrepreneurship… they did not necessarily get enjoyment from the act of building a company. Instead they only wanted the end result. So I think that if someone is like me and they are really excited about the types of challenges that you have building a company, and likes to think about as something that would be really fun, then its probably the only thing you can do. You would probably be unhappy if you tried to do anything else.” “[I’ve also noticed that] People who become successful entrepreneurs always know that they are going to make it and make (their ideas) successful. They don’t perceive the chance of failure because they will try and try and try again until they get it right. Where as people that have trouble being an entrepreneur thought that “well I gave it a shot” or “I will do this while doing something else”, they never had their entire heart in that concept. “ “But I think that if that’s something that you really want, that will make you happy, and your putting all your energy in it, you should definitely go for it. “ When I asked what Stephen’s next big idea was he gave me a short and precise answer consisting of only two words, “Smiley Media”. “I think that we’re just getting started with Smiley and for the entire time since I started the company I’ve been waiting for the moment where we really had the financial resources and the really strong team to build our company and take it to the next level, and I’m really excited about having Smiley do bigger and bigger things.”

7

Which Processor Is Right For Me?

The current king of the processor rehelm is the Intel Core i7 980x Extreme. That piece of beauty is going to cost you a cool thausand dollars. If you want to go a little but of a more affordable route then there are plenty of good options espesically if you lok at some AMD’s or some last gerneration systems.


At this point the only things with single core processors are cell phones and low end netbooks. All other netbooks and computers either have dual (2) or quad (4)cores and some super high end computers have hex (6) core processors. More cores is typically useful when multitasking different programs and if the program utalizes multaple cores it will benifit from multiple cores to use. Dual cores are typacally cheaper then quads and quads are typically cheaper then hexes. Also keep in mind that the processor is the broins of the computer so you hould not skimp on the processor.

The last step of picking a prpcessor is actually a couple steps. The reason I added these toget her ibecause they are typically grouped together in the processor. There are the clock speed, the cashe, and the front side bus. Thankfully to chose these, all you have to do is fund the processor you can afford with the most of these. Now the clock speed is arguablly te most imortent of these three because you could have a lot of cashe and FSB but if you have a really slow clockspeed then you wont get anything done. An intresting note is that as you add more cores you mght notice that the clock spped drops a little bit. Thats OK.

If your building a new computer or even chosing a new laptop the processor is the central brain of the computer. Here is a simple flow chart to take you throught the process. Here is the first choise when choosing your processor, which brand to use. There are two major brands Intel and AMD. Intel for the longest time has been the champion but AMD has alweys been the safe underdog choise. Personally I would choose AMD because they tend to be a little bit better at giving you bang for your buck where as Intel you are typically getting what you pay for their five or six hundred dollar chips and their top of the line 1000 dollar chips are going to be the best in the business. The next strp to choosing a processor is deciding how many cores you want.

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Story By Ravi

8

How a “trigger” finger turns to a trigger finger

Story By Ravi

9

later. Another incident of this caliber was in 2001 when Gregg J. Kleinmark, a new parent, who was bathing his 10-month kids he then went to another room for half of an hour to play Mortal Kombat on his Gameboy and in the meantime his two kids drowned. Out of dozens of instances like this involving violent video games only two reportedly involved non-violent video games. And of course it gets worse. Two largely publicized instances, the first one Daniel, dubbed the “Halo Killer” who was a 17-year-old kid finishing high school when the very popular game “Halo 3” came out. Daniel played the game for over 15 hours straight before his parents took the game away from him and locked the game up. Inside the same safe was a handgun. Daniel stole the gun and shot and killed his mother and shot and wounded his father. He then put the gun in his father’s hand, took the Halo game and fled the scene. Then we saw an even more devastating scene, the Columbine High School massacre, when two boys storm their school armed to the teeth pretending they were in a video game. Later investigation says that the boys were planning this for a while and were planning to coincide with other school shootings. If we don’t want to face another act of agression There are high school killings to emulate video games; parents letting their kids drown to play a violent game and even people murdered because they banned their kids from playing violent video games. The government needs to crack down on the sale and the content of violent video games for the good of all people. I know that banning the content of these games and the banning of these games infringes on first ammendment rights but then does the instences like I mentioned above turn into the harming of the greater good.

Daniel Petric a sweet 17-year-old boy living in New Jersey turns into a calculated killer overnight when his parents banned him from playing the latest installment of his prized Halo series. This is not the only incident of its type and there are even more incidents involving just petty crime. Violent video games in the country should be regulated when sold and the government should crack down on the content of these games for the protection of the American people. There was a study by the journal of Social Psychological and Personality Science recently that studies the coloration of playing violet video games after having to complete an aggravating task. There were four groups of men, one group completed their task then played a non violent video game and were told not to think about playing the game for 24 hours, and a group that played a non violent video game and were told to think over the next day how they could play better. The other two groups played violent video games after completing their task and like the other two groups one group was told to think about how they could play the game better and one group was not. According to the journal after 24 hours the groups that played non violent video games were both relaxed after playing their task, but the groups that played violent video games showed high levels of aggression and the group that was told to reminisce about the game showed the highest levels of aggression. Violent video games have also been proven to have larger addictive affects then non-violent casual video games. In 2004 South Korean boy, Seungseob Lee, was playing Starcraft, a violent role playing game, for over 50 hours straight before he went into cardiac arrest, although he was rushed to a hospital he died a few hours


The Sale of Violent Video Games

10

When video games in a general aspect are seen negatively by parents and teachers, how can some teachers turn this piece into an educational instrument? Even though many articles addressing this topic say that games can make your child inactive and less interested in learning, some schools have incorporated this tool as part of their teaching curriculum. The school of IS 123 in the Bronx has, and students are learning while having fun. Students are developing many techniques that teachers alone can’t teach them, and by other schools doing the same, video games can help other students across the nation increase their learning skills as well. By playing any sort of game and learning at the same time students can really learn easily and have a great amount of fun. Teachers in Intermediate School 123 have done so already and is very effective in the learning of their students.

Story By Carlos a.

The program Study Island has helped many students learn and have fun while building educational skills that the student will need later in their education. “It actually taught me how to divide and how to multiply,” student Nyla Jones said. As Nyla this educational tool used by the school IS 123 has helped the students in mathematics and other subjects. The test percentages and state wide exams averages are rising due to this program that IS 123 and many other schools are using. Video games are proving to be effective and kids are having fun. If by using video games students learn and have fun then it would really pay of. People have always used different techniques to teach and video games would really change the path of teaching. I think that if video games are used many kids will love to go to school to have fun and learn with out even knowing it. what can video games and computer games teach your student?

Learning While Playing Games


11

Video games and computer games can help many students learn many things that teachers might not get to their students as effectively as playing a game. Video games can help students learn real life values such a survival and what some people need to due to live another day. “Instead, you go around the game’s world making choices and playing out the results of those choices. Some things move you along more than others, but the choice of what to do is up to you. I’d call this “real world” learning.” says Marc Prensky. Many games on the computer such as the ones in Study Island can help many students learn and review for state tests. “It’s material that’s tested on the state test, so it’s not that they’re throwing in just basic level stuff,” teacher Christina Varghese said.

There are many different techniques that a kid can take from a video game or just any kind of game.What are some of the thing that a kid can learn? Kids can learn things such as how to manage time and money. Kids learn money and time management skills at a very young age through these video games and carry these skills with them, as they grow older in age. By playing games kids can also learn about different ethnics and races.”The concept of ‘Unity in Diversity” is established in a child’s mind as they are exposed to players of other races and nationalities during the game.” Barack Obama and the Department of Education are thinking about the possibilities of video games for learning tools.“President Barack Obama recently identified the creation of good educational software as one of the “grand challenges for American innovation,” This would change every aspect in which we learn. this would be innovative.Many kids will be waiting for classes to start to play and learn.

As video games are controversial as whether they are good or bad for kids many studies have proven that they can do good. It helps many students in IS 123 and can help many other students in different

schools in the future. Just imagine a school of video games, it might not be so distant from now. The best thing about it is that the students will enjoy their time playing video games while still having fun. Students will stop hating the early mornings to go to school and will rather enjoy them.Kids will learn without even knowing it.

Teens playing in an arcade.




12

Joystick Game

Score: 9/10

Thumbs downPoor match-making server for consoles•multiplayer dominated by assuault rifles and SMG’s•Bad hit detection at long range•no sniper and shotgun maps•

Story By Carlos a.

Thumbs upcampaign full of excitment•great multiplayer mode •extrordinary Zombie mode that blows your mind•fun and innovative dead ops•Balanced multiplayer guns•Kill streaks don’t count for other killstreaks•Treyarch listens to their community•


Thumbs upGreat co-op campaign•Total multiplayer balance•New forge world map added to forge•New armor abilities giving more •cutomization and personalized gameplayBetter editing and recording in •theater mode

Story by Austin C.

Thumbs upGreat co-op campaign•Total multiplayer balance•New forge world map added to forge•New armor abilities giving more •cutomization and personalized gameplayBetter editing and recording in •theater mode

Joystick

Game Score:


910

Thumbs downVertical multiplayer maps that are •different from older installmentsShorter jump highth•no battle riffle•Common double beat downs•Slight matchmaking errors•

From the outside the office Twisted Pixel Games appears to be a rather

plain and unattractive building in the middle of the city, similar to all the rest,

but when you open the doors you see a team of game designers at rows and rows of desks

working and shouting suggestions, computers glowing and creativity flowing.This place is not just

another office building in the city.

Twisted Pixel Games is a quirky game designing company located in Austin, Texas. Twisted Pixel Games, created in 2006,

is pretty different from most of the big name companies you hear about in the gaming scene. This company’s latest production is Comic

Jumper: The Adventures of Captain Smiley and is actually an addition to the Xbox marketplace. These guys aren’t your average game producers.

Twisted Pixel Games is one of the few companies in the business of making new indie and arcade games which means they make games independently

from large game producers like Activison. The games are packed full of re-playable action in short levels and game types instead of a one time play through. “Sixty dollars is a lot of money to spend on something you aren’t sure of and that may only last a few hours.” said Level Designer Alex Jones who works at the small company “Arcade games are also often more original or experimental so they can offer different experiences than retail games.” These arcade games are now amazingly popular because of the creativity and re-playability they offer.

There is a growing community of players online today that are only playing arcade games available on the Xbox marketplace introduced to Xbox 360 users in December, 2005. With the gaming landscape constantly changing the arcade scene is one of many genres having a huge growth spurt raking in a hefty 1.2 billion dollars for Microsoft. Plenty of people own arcade games now days and it’s not uncommon to see some

one playing on the arcade more than on most mainstream games like Call of Duty or Halo.

Twisted Pixel’s choice of game production attributes to the fact the these small games are growing. Arcade games offer an experimental option for gamers that retail

A differnet

kind of arcade

games lack and is a huge attraction for a new gaming nation. The creativity and ideas that an arcade producer can run with is limitless. Twisted Pixel’s greatest creation “Splosion Man”, where you play as a man made completely of “splosions” with the strange ability to “splode” that must use his special powers in order to escape an evil science lab were he is held captive, is one of the many great examples of how a strange idea can bud into a great, fun, new game concept in the arcade scene.

“Ideas come from everything you study in life,” said Jones. whose job as level designer gives him freedom to create tons of cool levels for you character to fight, jump, or even “splode” through. “It is extremely expensive and time consuming to create large mainstream games. If a single game does not sell well the entire studio could easily be shut down. Because of this risk larger game studios tend to stick to...proven types of games that are seen as safer. You lose a lot of freedom.” Arcade

games have wso much to offer to the gaming world and are growing exponentially. Twisted Pixel’s creativity and influence on the new gaming scene has come with great success landing three best selling games in the Xbox Marketplace including Comic Jumper, The Maw, and of course the company’s favorite creation Splosion man.

As far as life as a game producer at the ugly little office building of Twisted Pixel Games, Jones says it only has one down side “It’s pretty great...The main downside is when you get home and want to play games your eyes may be worn out from working on the computer all day, so sometimes you have to go outdoors or work out or do something else ridiculous for a while.” It just goes to show how one company having fun and doing what they love in a developing genre of games can help change the mainstream view of video games.

Story by Austin C. December 2010 JoyStick

17

From the outside the office Twisted Pixel Games appears to be a rather

plain and unattractive building in the middle of the city, similar to all the rest,

but when you open the doors you see a team of game designers at rows and rows of desks

working and shouting suggestions, computers glowing and creativity flowing.This place is not just

another office building in the city.

Twisted Pixel Games is a quirky game designing company located in Austin, Texas. Twisted Pixel Games, created in 2006,

is pretty different from most of the big name companies you hear about in the gaming scene. This company’s latest production is Comic

Jumper: The Adventures of Captain Smiley and is actually an addition to the Xbox marketplace. These guys aren’t your average game producers.

Twisted Pixel Games is one of the few companies in the business of making new indie and arcade games which means they make games independently

from large game producers like Activison. The games are packed full of re-playable action in short levels and game types instead of a one time play through. “Sixty dollars is a lot of money to spend on something you aren’t sure of and that may only last a few hours.” said Level Designer Alex Jones who works at the small company “Arcade games are also often more original or experimental so they can offer different experiences than retail games.” These arcade games are now amazingly popular because of the creativity and re-playability they offer.

There is a growing community of players online today that are only playing arcade games available on the Xbox marketplace introduced to Xbox 360 users in December, 2005. With the gaming landscape constantly changing the arcade scene is one of many genres having a huge growth spurt raking in a hefty 1.2 billion dollars for Microsoft. Plenty of people own arcade games now days and it’s not uncommon to see some

one playing on the arcade more than on most mainstream games like Call of Duty or Halo.

Twisted Pixel’s choice of game production attributes to the fact the these small games are growing. Arcade games offer an experimental option for gamers that retail

A differnet

kind of arcade

games lack and is a huge attraction for a new gaming nation. The creativity and ideas that an arcade producer can run with is limitless. Twisted Pixel’s greatest creation “Splosion Man”, where you play as a man made completely of “splosions” with the strange ability to “splode” that must use his special powers in order to escape an evil science lab were he is held captive, is one of the many great examples of how a strange idea can bud into a great, fun, new game concept in the arcade scene.

“Ideas come from everything you study in life,” said Jones. whose job as level designer gives him freedom to create tons of cool levels for you character to fight, jump, or even “splode” through. “It is extremely expensive and time consuming to create large mainstream games. If a single game does not sell well the entire studio could easily be shut down. Because of this risk larger game studios tend to stick to...proven types of games that are seen as safer. You lose a lot of freedom.” Arcade

games have wso much to offer to the gaming world and are growing exponentially. Twisted Pixel’s creativity and influence on the new gaming scene has come with great success landing three best selling games in the Xbox Marketplace including Comic Jumper, The Maw, and of course the company’s favorite creation Splosion man.

As far as life as a game producer at the ugly little office building of Twisted Pixel Games, Jones says it only has one down side “It’s pretty great...The main downside is when you get home and want to play games your eyes may be worn out from working on the computer all day, so sometimes you have to go outdoors or work out or do something else ridiculous for a while.” It just goes to show how one company having fun and doing what they love in a developing genre of games can help change the mainstream view of video games.

Story by Austin C. December 2010 JoyStick

18

Many times my computer has gotten nasty viruses that just mess with my computer. It gets me so frustrated and annoyed that I just want to get the CPU and smash it. But it’s not just me that gets these nasty viruses that others generate to have fun. Many others do it to just because they don't know how to prevent from getting these viruses. But there are people that can help you get rid of these malicious and annoying viruses. Your not alone people such as Jose Chairez, a young man that knows how computers work, can help you get rid of these annoying viruses and ease your life.

People such as Jose Chairez locate the viruses and then do what is necessary to get rid of them. Jose say that he has the most trouble “Locating them, most of the time I require to use another device to attach the hard drive to gain control of the files since

on the original device is modified by the virus; it locks its files to prevent deletion of them. “ He has to go through other steps just to gain access something that just an administrator of the computer can acsess.

People get different types of viruses. There are “BOOT sector viruses, Program or File Virus, or Polymorphic Virus, Trojans, trackers, and many more” Jose says. They are alhey can all harm your computer and do irreversible deletion of important files. You can prevent these viruses by downloading a virus protector, which blocks or deletes these annoying viruses. The most frequent effects that a virus can do while trying to delete them is that the computer can overheat. It may also cause it to run slowly or even crash.

Removing computer viruses can take up a lot of time to professionals such as Jose. It is a lengthy process and can be hard just to locate the virus itself. The time that it takes to remove a virus really depends in many things. “Depending on how infected a device is. It could take from five seconds to five hours “ to remove the viruses. But the fastest virus to remove for Jose is a “Trojan”. Trojans are viruses that record information in your computer and are sent back to the creator of the infection. These types of viruses can be located in the temporary files of your computer. Trojan viruses got their name because they go to your files undetectably but can be denied by virus protectors.

Jose started his study in the art of removing viruses at the age of 16. He first started in his High School named “Travis high school”. He became even more specialized in the local “Austin Community Collage” where they allowed him to take whole computer PCs and Laptops troubleshoots. Because of this he can clean out 10 to 20 computers depending on how difficult the infection is a day. When I asked him what part he liked of removing viruses he answered “I don’t, removing viruses requires to check the whole hard drive and some of these hard drives are five hundred to one terabyte in size but they are out there and I require to do so on my profession.” He says that it is hard for him to just stare at the computer for long periods of time, which sometimes turn in to many hours of combating these annoying viruses. Their are many way for someone to get viruses without he or she knowing that what they are getting is a virus. What many don’t know is how to avoid the virus. He says that if you “avoid them by not accessing nasty websites, do not use peer to peer programs like Lime Wire or Ares. Also by keeping my antivirus running well and frequent scans, have registry scans to since most viruses

modify the registry to gain access to the original files.” These are effective and easy to follow step that help you not to encounter a malicious file.

Even the professionals get viruses too. Jose says that he has gotten from 5 or more viruses on his computers and laptops. He says that two of these viruses were intentional due to a project the he had. The infection caused his laptop to get an overheat and in the long term effect it caused it to run slow. “The other three where because my antivirus protection was expired and they do not protect you any more, that is why it is essential to have and antivirus software up to date and don’t let it get expired,” Says Jose. That is why being up to date with everything in your computer is essential. Jose also say that it is important to “also have a registry cleaner since Trojans are design to create, re-route and remove key components of the system since most of the desktop and laptops that I repair are windows based systems.” With all these precautions you can also avoid the infection of your computer.

Jose has many times helped me in my computer and he is so nice and attentive when it comes to attend a customer. Jose as friend helps me out with my own computer and has removed many of the viruses that I have encountered and gotten infected in my computer. He also has taught me how to avoid these infections and has worked because I haven't encountered any viruses lately. Thank to people like Jose how have dedicated time to remove viruses the consumers can work happily with their computers.

Story by Carlos A. December 2010 JoyStick

19

Many times my computer has gotten nasty viruses that just mess with my computer. It gets me so frustrated and annoyed that I just want to get the CPU and smash it. But it’s not just me that gets these nasty viruses that others generate to have fun. Many others do it to just because they don't know how to prevent from getting these viruses. But there are people that can help you get rid of these malicious and annoying viruses. Your not alone people such as Jose Chairez, a young man that knows how computers work, can help you get rid of these annoying viruses and ease your life.

People such as Jose Chairez locate the viruses and then do what is necessary to get rid of them. Jose say that he has the most trouble “Locating them, most of the time I require to use another device to attach the hard drive to gain control of the files since

on the original device is modified by the virus; it locks its files to prevent deletion of them. “ He has to go through other steps just to gain access something that just an administrator of the computer can acsess.

People get different types of viruses. There are “BOOT sector viruses, Program or File Virus, or Polymorphic Virus, Trojans, trackers, and many more” Jose says. They are alhey can all harm your computer and do irreversible deletion of important files. You can prevent these viruses by downloading a virus protector, which blocks or deletes these annoying viruses. The most frequent effects that a virus can do while trying to delete them is that the computer can overheat. It may also cause it to run slowly or even crash.

Removing computer viruses can take up a lot of time to professionals such as Jose. It is a lengthy process and can be hard just to locate the virus itself. The time that it takes to remove a virus really depends in many things. “Depending on how infected a device is. It could take from five seconds to five hours “ to remove the viruses. But the fastest virus to remove for Jose is a “Trojan”. Trojans are viruses that record information in your computer and are sent back to the creator of the infection. These types of viruses can be located in the temporary files of your computer. Trojan viruses got their name because they go to your files undetectably but can be denied by virus protectors.

Jose started his study in the art of removing viruses at the age of 16. He first started in his High School named “Travis high school”. He became even more specialized in the local “Austin Community Collage” where they allowed him to take whole computer PCs and Laptops troubleshoots. Because of this he can clean out 10 to 20 computers depending on how difficult the infection is a day. When I asked him what part he liked of removing viruses he answered “I don’t, removing viruses requires to check the whole hard drive and some of these hard drives are five hundred to one terabyte in size but they are out there and I require to do so on my profession.” He says that it is hard for him to just stare at the computer for long periods of time, which sometimes turn in to many hours of combating these annoying viruses. Their are many way for someone to get viruses without he or she knowing that what they are getting is a virus. What many don’t know is how to avoid the virus. He says that if you “avoid them by not accessing nasty websites, do not use peer to peer programs like Lime Wire or Ares. Also by keeping my antivirus running well and frequent scans, have registry scans to since most viruses

modify the registry to gain access to the original files.” These are effective and easy to follow step that help you not to encounter a malicious file.

Even the professionals get viruses too. Jose says that he has gotten from 5 or more viruses on his computers and laptops. He says that two of these viruses were intentional due to a project the he had. The infection caused his laptop to get an overheat and in the long term effect it caused it to run slow. “The other three where because my antivirus protection was expired and they do not protect you any more, that is why it is essential to have and antivirus software up to date and don’t let it get expired,” Says Jose. That is why being up to date with everything in your computer is essential. Jose also say that it is important to “also have a registry cleaner since Trojans are design to create, re-route and remove key components of the system since most of the desktop and laptops that I repair are windows based systems.” With all these precautions you can also avoid the infection of your computer.

Jose has many times helped me in my computer and he is so nice and attentive when it comes to attend a customer. Jose as friend helps me out with my own computer and has removed many of the viruses that I have encountered and gotten infected in my computer. He also has taught me how to avoid these infections and has worked because I haven't encountered any viruses lately. Thank to people like Jose how have dedicated time to remove viruses the consumers can work happily with their computers.

Story by Carlos A. December 2010 JoyStick

20

protect Internet rights, had a recent post about how Internet censorship could and will most likely stop his career in blogging and infringe on his 1st amendment rights. The censorship of the Internet not only infringes on the 1st amendment but also infringes on a core principle of the Constitution the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. A growing number of people are starting to really on opinion and video based websites that could be shut down if more Internet censorship is to come around. Many people use blogging and sharing ideas on the Internet to make a living. Also many people depend on these blogs and videos to help them with everyday issues.

This country was based the opinion that we should say what we want with out being persecuted or stopped. We must protect our individual rights and we must preserve our productive use of the Internet. America has always prided itself with the fact that we have the liberty to say what we thing and be able to do what we want. The Internet is now a vastly used tool, and should be treated as one. It is in our benefit to protect it from unfair censorship of this great resource. The use of Internet as it is now is how our society survives and communicates. The Internet is now too important to us, the Internet really is a tool and it’s time we lock our toolbox.

blogger Phillip Defranco, Phil goes on to speak about the issues with the S.3804 bill. This video blogging is how Phil makes his living, and with this bill in place possibly blocking the website YouTube.com he would not be able to make his steady wage, but more importantly he would not be able to share his opinions with his loyal fans and viewers. His video about his issue with the S.3804 bill just goes to show you how much one may value the opinion of another on the Internet. These opinions are useful to individuals trying trying to learn about current issues and to just learn in general. There are many useful resources that are in jeopardy.

There are many questions about legality that are brought up with Internet censorship. Mostly involving the 1st amendment. Blogger, Sherwin Shy on the blogging website Publicknowlage.com, a site based in Washington DC that was created to help

December 2010 JoyStick

How to stop the digital duct tape

In this big bad world of ours we must protect ourselves and our loved ones from the huge threat of the Internet. We have to censor this horrible creature that is the Internet. How would this untamed beast be of any use with out extensive censorship? Well I can tell you. There are a growing number of countries continuing to censor their Internet more and more, this includes Brazil, Australia, The United Kingdom, and The United States may be next on the list.Our ability to access any information we want from the Internet is a great resource that we have taken for granted. If our nation censored our Internet similarly to North Korea or China. The information that you could normally get, say for an article about Internet censorship, would be unavailable

There is a very real threat to the Internet as we know it posed by the S.3804 bill, sponsored by Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) (what a pair), trying to push its way through congress. “(1) IN GENERAL- The Attorney General shall maintain a public listing of domain names that, upon information and reasonable belief, the Department of Justice determines are dedicated to infringing activities but for which the Attorney General has not filed an action under this section.” This is a quote from this bill stating that all control over Internet censorship will be under the list that the Attorney General creates based on what websites he sees as “unfitting” and “potentially harmful”. There are two

issues with this proposition. First there is no specific definition as to what is “reasonable belief” this is way too loose of a definition to show what websites can and will be blocked. The second problem with this proposition is that the list that will block these domains is created by one person under no regulation what so ever. If this bill passes as it is the Attorney General will be able to block any website he sees fit, this can easily include websites opposing any political party or opposing the Atem-self.

There are many people who use the Internet each day without a second though as to “will I be able to visit this site tomorrow?”. These people are, of course, important to the Internet but they are not as important to the Internet as bloggers and video bloggers that are the heart and soul of the Internet. In a recent video post by the popular YouTube video

Story by Austin C.

21

protect Internet rights, had a recent post about how Internet censorship could and will most likely stop his career in blogging and infringe on his 1st amendment rights. The censorship of the Internet not only infringes on the 1st amendment but also infringes on a core principle of the Constitution the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. A growing number of people are starting to really on opinion and video based websites that could be shut down if more Internet censorship is to come around. Many people use blogging and sharing ideas on the Internet to make a living. Also many people depend on these blogs and videos to help them with everyday issues.

This country was based the opinion that we should say what we want with out being persecuted or stopped. We must protect our individual rights and we must preserve our productive use of the Internet. America has always prided itself with the fact that we have the liberty to say what we thing and be able to do what we want. The Internet is now a vastly used tool, and should be treated as one. It is in our benefit to protect it from unfair censorship of this great resource. The use of Internet as it is now is how our society survives and communicates. The Internet is now too important to us, the Internet really is a tool and it’s time we lock our toolbox.

blogger Phillip Defranco, Phil goes on to speak about the issues with the S.3804 bill. This video blogging is how Phil makes his living, and with this bill in place possibly blocking the website YouTube.com he would not be able to make his steady wage, but more importantly he would not be able to share his opinions with his loyal fans and viewers. His video about his issue with the S.3804 bill just goes to show you how much one may value the opinion of another on the Internet. These opinions are useful to individuals trying trying to learn about current issues and to just learn in general. There are many useful resources that are in jeopardy.

There are many questions about legality that are brought up with Internet censorship. Mostly involving the 1st amendment. Blogger, Sherwin Shy on the blogging website Publicknowlage.com, a site based in Washington DC that was created to help

December 2010 JoyStick

How to stop the digital duct tape

In this big bad world of ours we must protect ourselves and our loved ones from the huge threat of the Internet. We have to censor this horrible creature that is the Internet. How would this untamed beast be of any use with out extensive censorship? Well I can tell you. There are a growing number of countries continuing to censor their Internet more and more, this includes Brazil, Australia, The United Kingdom, and The United States may be next on the list.Our ability to access any information we want from the Internet is a great resource that we have taken for granted. If our nation censored our Internet similarly to North Korea or China. The information that you could normally get, say for an article about Internet censorship, would be unavailable

There is a very real threat to the Internet as we know it posed by the S.3804 bill, sponsored by Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) (what a pair), trying to push its way through congress. “(1) IN GENERAL- The Attorney General shall maintain a public listing of domain names that, upon information and reasonable belief, the Department of Justice determines are dedicated to infringing activities but for which the Attorney General has not filed an action under this section.” This is a quote from this bill stating that all control over Internet censorship will be under the list that the Attorney General creates based on what websites he sees as “unfitting” and “potentially harmful”. There are two

issues with this proposition. First there is no specific definition as to what is “reasonable belief” this is way too loose of a definition to show what websites can and will be blocked. The second problem with this proposition is that the list that will block these domains is created by one person under no regulation what so ever. If this bill passes as it is the Attorney General will be able to block any website he sees fit, this can easily include websites opposing any political party or opposing the Atem-self.

There are many people who use the Internet each day without a second though as to “will I be able to visit this site tomorrow?”. These people are, of course, important to the Internet but they are not as important to the Internet as bloggers and video bloggers that are the heart and soul of the Internet. In a recent video post by the popular YouTube video

Story by Austin C.

22

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