Iain's Blog

Saturday, April 9, 2016

Saturday, March 19, 2016

The young gamers of today will become the old gamers of tomorrow, and this could be a very real opportunity for the business, says Prof. Bob De Schutter "There is a need for creating games that can be played by a more physically challenged, aging segment of the population. I have no doubt that the creative designers will respond in time." That's a quote from the father of video games and Magnavox Odyssey creator Ralph Baer. He understood what many developers in the modern industry have thus far mostly ignored: older people enjoy playing games too. At a GDC talk today, Miami University professor Bob De Schutter discussed the implications of an aging player crowd. "I'm going to talk about the 65-year-old version of me. He is seriously frustrated with the games that are being marketed," he began. De Schutter explained that older adults will become one of the largest groups among players in the future. As it stands now, the average age of a person playing games is around 35 (according to the ESA) and 27 percent of gamers in the US are currently over 50. Pew Research has found that 40 percent of 50-64 year olds play games, and the ISFE (Interactive Software Federation of Europe) found 27 percent of people between 55-64 play games in Europe. The IGEA (Interactive Games & Entertainment Association) found 51 percent of people between ages 55-64 play games across Australia and New Zealand, and 41 percent of 65-74 year olds. "I would estimate right now about 26 million gamers in the US between 50-64 and 11 million are older than 65," said De Schutter. Those are already some fairly large numbers and the games industry largely does not cater to their needs. The older people today did not grow up with games, but what happens when the younger people today who did live with games their whole lives enter their golden years? De Schutter said there could be 105 million US gamers over age 50 in the near future. And not all of these people will have the complete abilities to play games the way they used to. Looking at current data 36 percent of 65-year-olds and up have a disability, any disability. 23 percent have an ambulatory disability, 15 percent have hearing difficulty and 9 percent have vision difficulty. De Schutter pointed to Gameaccessibilityguidelines.com from the IGDA, as a great resource for developers. There's a very real possibility that some older players will want to play but won't be able to use a controller fully or might not even be able to turn on a console without a caregiver's help. De Schutter stressed the importance of accessibility and content. Far too often today, there's been a focus on brain games or things that are supposed to help seniors, but not only is there no evidence of it helping to prevent cognitive decline, but the games are not that interesting, he said. Ultimately, these games are being sold based on fear of decline, and they're not drawing on older players' other motivations to play. He referenced one 70-year-old who got really, really good at Trackmania and beat De Schutter regularly because he just practiced and practiced. De Schutter said that developers should not get the idea that older players don't like challenge because many do. It's more about accessibility and adjusting interface design (see list of tips below). 1 "How would you feel if every game out there stereotyped you. I guess every female gamer in the audience knows what I'm talking about," he said. De Schutter pointed to research from Quantic Foundry, which examined gamer motivation. The research pointed to people over 50 enjoying games that offer adventure, role playing and intellectual challenge. Baby Boomers like online games as well because they seem to enjoy games that let them escape into another world (which could make VR potentially appealing as well). 2 There are actually adult playgrounds for seniors being built around the world. It's human nature for anyone to want to play, and so game developers need to figure out how to keep older players engaged. De Schutter's big focus is looking at Geronto-Aesthetics, which involves six key areas: cultivation (playing games for personal growth), contribution (playing games that give something back to society), connectedness (playing games as a shared experience with cherished people, people you can bond with like grandchildren), compensation (games to replace unavailable activities, e.g. playing Madden to compensate for lack of sports), contemporaneity (games keeping up with the times), and nostalgia (games as a conduit to the past). Adding any or all of these components to games could result in a product that's far more appealing to older adults. De Schutter broke down the types of older gamers that exist and the reasons that they play, but generally speaking the biggest things he's seen with older gamers is that they enjoy games that are designed for a rich life history, games that utilize crystalized intelligence (not fluid intelligence, which is what most games require), and games that let a person use his/her imagination (graphics are much less important than drawing on personal fantasy). Importantly, the industry needs to be better with mature content and themes (not mature as in violence rated by the ESRB, but serious subject matter). De Schutter acknowledged that many indies are doing this today, but the industry needs much more and it's the kind of content that should appeal to older people; he cited Papers, Please as a great example. 3 Another pro-tip: design for intergenerational play. "Really go for it," he said, "because it's so often that the younger players get the older ones to play in families." And finally, he noted that there need to be older developers, too. As developers age, if they keep designing games, they'll want to make content for older individuals.

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Democrats matrix

Last Saturday morning, I went for a nice long run in South Florida and pondered the presidential primary contests. It appears that the GOP is down to three fellas. But it was the Democrat duel that made me think the most. I wondered how Vermont’s Senator Bernie Sanders was causing such an uproar in the Democratic primary. After all, what he is proposing with this “Democratic Socialism” has never found lasting success anywhere in the world, unless you appreciate equality of outcomes.

Then it hit me: the message Sanders is delivering reminded me of the 90’s movie “The Matrix.” The basic premise of the film correlates to the governing philosophy of which Sanders promotes. In the film, humans have been overtaken by the “machines” and are being used as energy sources since their prior energy source – the sun – has been lost. The machines create a perfect, computer-generated world for their human batteries to reside in – the Matrix.

However, there are humans who have escaped the Matrix and live in the “real world,” where life is imperfect and tough. It is a world all about survival, where they are constantly hunted by the machines. Even within the Matrix, there are agents who police the computer generated world making sure there are no disruptions – they can take on any form.

My favorite scene was when the character Morpheus asks the lead character Neo, played by Keanu Reeves, to take a red pill or a blue pill. "You take the blue pill, the story ends,” says Morpheus. “You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes."

The idea of progressive socialism is our world’s Matrix. It is a utopian world that promises all that one would desire. It is based upon a belief that one can have as many “free” things as they wish. These “free” things are guaranteed by the “machines” of progressive socialism, who believe they can create this world that does not exist. Just as the Matrix’s machines needed humans plugged in as their energy source, progressive socialists need to collectively drain the energy of individuals to make their schemes work.

When one is plugged into the matrix of progressive socialism, you do not exist for yourself. Your energy is usurped for the collective existence of the machines, and in exchange you are rewarded with the fantasy life of the Matrix.

Then come along those who have been “unplugged” from the matrix; conservatives who seek to, as Morpheus stated, free other minds. Conservatives come along and confront those plugged in with the seminal question, blue pill or red pill. How very interesting that in American politics that blue is associated with the Democrat party and red with the Republican party. If you take the blue pill you can stay in the fantasy world of the Matrix…but the red pill will free your mind, and you will see how deep the rabbit hole goes. The red pill represents freedom and liberty, allowing the individual to separate from the collective. However, the real world is not one of fantasy and pleasure; it is about survival, working hard, and evading the sentinels – the hunter machines, the liberal progressive media.

That is what it is like as the conservative today, and especially a minority conservative. The agents seek to prevent you from freeing more minds from the Matrix. They cannot allow you to educate and inform and have people taking the red pill and escaping their grip.

Friday, February 12, 2016

Sony Computer Entertainment headquarters in California now

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is a mantra that seemingly holds little meaning at Sony; it's just decided to undertake the most dramatic reshuffle of its videogame business since the 1990s right in the midst of stellar sales of its most successful home console yet. Business units will be rearranged and merged, organisation trees pruned and spliced, and most dramatically of all, the PlayStation business' headquarters will shift from Tokyo to California. News of the changes has, understandably, been mostly shrouded in that special version of the English language spoken only by corporate PR people (a dialect uniquely horrible and utterly meaningless), which has left many of the company's customers and even its partners wondering exactly what it all means.
In some senses, this is just tidying up. The separation between Sony Network Entertainment and Sony Computer Entertainment was a well-intentioned one at the outset; there was a future vision which imagined that network services, like the PlayStation Store and PlayStation Now, would eventually be something much, much larger than the PlayStation console itself. The idea was that Sony Network Entertainment would end up being a business unit that worked not only with SCE but with every other aspect of Sony's business, underwriting the future success of the company as a whole. That future might still come to pass, but things haven't played out as originally anticipated, partially because the company's grand plans for network services have been undermined by the success of rivals and partially because PlayStation has done far better than expected. As a consequence, Sony Network Entertainment presently mostly provides services for PlayStation consoles; it makes perfect sense for it to be brought together with the PlayStation itself. Optimistically, one can hope that removing this paper screen in the corporate structure will also help to fix some of the lingering problems with Sony's network systems, which are all-too-often an unreliable negative counterpoint to its otherwise impressive hardware and software.

"one can hope that removing this paper screen in the corporate structure will also help to fix some of the lingering problems with Sony's network systems"

Rather more dramatic is the move from Tokyo to California - and the rather less widely reported change to the company's global management structure, which will seemingly see the European, US and Asian divisions of Sony Interactive Entertainment (the new merged entity) sharing a single top-level management team. It's not clear whether this will have any impact on the actual independence of the regional teams - SCEE and SCEA always had quite a surprising degree of autonomy - but a structural change like this is usually designed to reflect an intended outcome, and in this case it's not unreasonable to expect that the regions will be working more closely together after the changes take effect.
What of that move to California, though? Isn't PlayStation, like Sony itself, quite intrinsically a Japanese brand? Aren't many of the values and qualities of the console and its software that actually appeal to consumers down to the fact that it's a Japanese creation? I've seen those arguments and plenty of others shoot back and forth over the Internet in the days since the announcement; and I have to confess, I have a little sympathy. In the eras of the PlayStation and PS2 in particular, the Japanese roots of the consoles were a major selling point; the systems became a window on to a world that was fascinatingly different, culturally and creatively, and I don't think it's unfair to say that much of the subsequent success of Japanese pop culture overseas owes a debt to the gateway drug of PlayStation. If the whole thing is now going to be based in California, is it going to lose that cultural value somehow?

" In the eras of the PlayStation and PS2 in particular, the Japanese roots of the consoles were a major selling point; the systems became a window on to a world that was fascinatingly different"

Well, no; I think fearing that PlayStation's identity will be lost in this move is a consequence of misunderstanding what PlayStation's identity has actually been all along. Sure, the Japanese origins of the console were a big and important part of its DNA, but if anything, the appeal of PlayStation since the early years has been founded in Sony's willingness to entrust the keys to the kingdom to its overseas offices. That exhibited itself in software development - WipEout being a key title for the first PlayStation is an early example of a tradition that went on to deliver pillars of support to the platform from overseas developers, from God of War to Uncharted to Killzone and plenty of others besides. It went further than that, though; Sony Computer Entertainment divisions outside Japan were trusted to develop key technologies and services that would come to define the future of the platform, and key staff from those overseas divisions became a part of decision-making processes at Sony in a way that has very rarely, if ever, been the case at PlayStation's rivals.
That's what leaves PlayStation in the situation it's in today - with one of the most impressively multi-national core teams you could hope to put together to run a platform business. From Sony boss Kaz Hirai on down, top executives on the PlayStation side of Sony speak fluent English and have extensive overseas experience; while people like SCE (soon to be SIE) boss Andrew House and PlayStation architect Mark Cerny have come to the company from overseas divisions, risen to enormously important positions and work seemingly seamlessly with the Japanese organisation. That might not seem like any great shakes in some regards, but in the context of a Japanese business, it's a big deal; it's indicative of a willingness on Sony's part to really embrace the idea of being an international business, not just a Japanese company that does some business overseas. That's the DNA of PlayStation, more than anything else, and it seems eminently unlikely that that's going to change with the move of headquarters to California. It's not like Japan Studio, the actual source of most of Sony's interesting Japanese titles, is going anywhere, and if Sony's commitment to Japanese game development wasn't clear, consider the enormous amount of cash rustled up, upsetting every damn budget in the company in the process, to ensure Hideo Kojima was on board after leaving Konami.

"at the moment only about one in every 18 PS4 units sold is being sold in Japan"

There will, of course, be changes; an organisational shift like this is expensive and messy, and Sony wouldn't be bothering to do it if it didn't want to see some changes. One can easily guess at one of the catalysts for the move; the Japanese market is less and less relevant to the home console business with every passing year, and at the moment only about one in every 18 PS4 units sold is being sold in Japan. In contrast, Vita does reasonably well in Japan, but is an irrelevance everywhere else in the world. It's not hard to see the argument that putting so much of the decision-making capacity for PlayStation in the heart of a market that no longer buys home consoles has the potential to warp perceptions and force errors. The creativity and imagination of Japanese developers is essential to PlayStation; the country's business environment and consumer market, by contrast, seems like an active impediment to Sony's success. Far better to put Sony's videogame business overseas, where it'll be in the same environment as Sony Pictures and Sony Music - the media arms of the company with which it arguably has far more in common than the remaining Japan-based divisions.
Plenty of analysts are spending plenty of time teasing out Sony's new structure and organisational chart to try to understand what will happen to PlayStation in future; the bottom line of what I'm trying to say here i that we shouldn't expect very much change in the short to medium term, at least not of the kind that will be remotely apparent to consumers. The firm may, to some degree, be ignoring exhortations not to fix what isn't broken; but it will also be keenly aware that PS4 is a goose that keeps laying golden eggs, and won't be waving any knives in its vicinity where possible (unlike the ones presently being brandished at me by the Metaphor Mixing Police). We can expect no major changes of course for Sony's console strategy in the next year or two; if there's to be real fall-out from this change, it will be in planning for the longer term, as the new management team tackle the question of what PS4's success means for the future of the once-presumed-dead console business.

Tuesday, February 9, 2016

anime has a R rating

I think people in Japan (and in many other countries including in Europe, other parts of Asia and even in Central/South America, etc) are far more open about animation and media.

Many of the problems seem to be aimed at America and in some ways, British culture. Where there seems to be these concepts that when you reach a certain age, you 'throw away childish things' and 'become a man'. Which can be seen all over, including being perpetuated in many 'cartoons' aimed right at kids as well. The typical story of a boy who 'wants to be a man'. So what does he do? He goes out and throws away all his toys, straps on some token of 'manhood' (from a sword to a three piece suit) and goes out and acts like what he thinks a man is.

We can all remember this stereotype in shows like Hey Arnold!, Rocco's Modern Life, Fairly OddParents, Spongebob Squarepants, Chowder, Gumball and heck, even Disney movies. The problem is, while those shows and movies are obviously parodying the message and pointing out that these things AREN'T what being a man is all about....many kids actually get the opposite message. And watch all these cartoons thinking that being a man IS about throwing away all your toys, going to work, getting married and ignoring everything about your past.

Western media as a whole doesn't help. Hollywood is pushing this concept all the time with commercials, prime time dramas/sit comes, sports, even political commentaries on CNN and MSNBC are constantly talking about 'getting our kids off the cartoons and games and into the adult world', as if these things are evil and we should have never even had contact with them in the first place. American media is pretty much assaulting adults with an image that if you want to be an adult, there's only one option. Throw away everything 'childish' and watch all the CSI, Survivor and CNN like everyone else. The irony of these types of things being 'for adults' while something like Spongebob or Batman: TAS should be obvious, but many don't see it.

Even things like comic books are still looked down upon. The fact that they aren't even considered 'acceptable' until they have a live action remake speaks volumes about how American (and some other western) audiences view animation and comics vs live action works. A terrible live action version of Deadpool starring Keanu Reeves would still sell better in the box office than the absolute best animated Deadpool movie that could be made. Not based on any objective quality, but simply because it was live action. And that's the sad state of America's bias against animation....

The only exception is 3D animation. But that's honestly because the studios put hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising behind each movie. And make the money back in DVD/BD sales. The instant those movies stop making that money (like 2D did with Pocahontas, Mulan and Titan AE), studios will stop supporting 3D animation as well.

I know this sounds like a rant, but I'm seriously feeling like the American media industry is stagnating and has been getting worse the last 15 years or so. Endless crime drama clones, reality shows, copying British concepts and remakes of old movie concepts. And they've even resorted to copying anime (The Matrix, Speed Racer, Astro Boy, Speed, Almost Human, etc) while claiming animation and anime is an inferior medium. I honestly feel like there needs to be a major barrier of ignorance taken down so the American audience can just know more than what Hollywood is allowing to be shown to them.

Friday, February 5, 2016

Voting

Many Christians are convinced that being “political,” or even voting, somehow violates their religious faith. They think Christians should be ”in the world, but not of it” abstaining from earthly messes like government and instead keep their eyes on the sky, patiently awaiting Christ’s return that will fix everything. Lucky for us, the Founders, virtually all of whom were Christians steeped in the Bible since school days, never bought that view, or they wouldn’t have started the revolution against King George that gave us our great nation. And we would all be British. Four times in the Declaration of Independence the Christian God is credited as author of the values and rights on which America was founded and his protection invoked. It is way past time to rise up and revive those values. This election, Christians who are sick and tired of government’s chokehold, sick and tired of God’s man-woman marriage being mocked and branded homophobic, sick and tired of the moral rot in which our society is wallowing, must come out and vote against it. The only way to stop the relentless zombie march of the God-challenged secularists against believers is by voting for leaders from school board to president who pledge to tirelessly defend the original Christian morals of this country and have actually done so, not merely waved their mom’s Bible from a staged rally. Everywhere, an all-powerful “culture” and arrogant government are shredding the Bible as well as the Constitution. The immorality that God warns us against rampages across the society from a young woman seen by millions mimicking sex onstage, to the vile woman-hating lyrics of the songs our kids constantly have plugged into their ears, to the celebration of aberrant “marriage” that the Supreme Court declares normal, overturning the will of millions in 30-plus states. After the Supreme Court justices trashed God’s law, the White House--in gleeful party mode--lit up the rainbow colors of the same-sex marriage lobby, deliberately insulting the faithful in this Christian-majority nation. Humans created by God in his own image are reduced to body parts and a non-profit that pretends to be a woman’s health provider dismembers babies in the womb for profit. And this outrage is funded by we the taxpayers. Television is a slaughterhouse of rape, mutilation, murder and dissection of human beings as if they were so much hamburger. The victims are nearly all women. The most-searched topic on the Internet is pornography which horrifically abuses women, men, and even young children while destroying marriages and families. “Sex education” starting in grade school is convincing our kids that the same-sex affection so typical in the pre-teen years means they will be homosexuals for life, while gays are really only 3 or 4 percent of the population. Our citizens are increasingly addicted to drugs and other peoples’ money. Fully half of the population takes government support in the form of housing, food stamps, or other types of welfare. Half of the population also pays no federal income tax. The socialist worldview – taking from those who earn their income by working, and giving to those who don’t – is a page ripped from the fevered Communist brain of Karl Marx who in 1875 decreed, “from each according to his ability; to each according to his need.” Now, after over 140 years of disastrous failures that have killed about 120 million of their own people (Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc.) this lethal atrocity is being resuscitated like the living dead. Our nation has always provided the truly needy a generous safety net as it should, but in the last seven years the safety net has morphed into a feather bed. The “social gospel” preached by liberals actually contradicts the real Gospel. The Apostle Paul warned, “… if anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work…such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living.” 2 Thess. 3:10-12. God knew what great human satisfaction comes from work, and so he gifted us each with talents and abilities so we would find fulfillment using our God-given skills. But the idea of “income redistribution” in the name of “equality” defies God’s plan for earning our own way. Taking from others is really a government-driven form of stealing, forbidden by the Bible’s Eighth Commandment. Its evil twin, coveting whatever your neighbor has, is banned by the Tenth Commandment yet promoted by this government as class warfare. Our 20 trillion dollar debt is an even more deeply troubling form of theft, stealing from our own children and grandchildren. This is why the big-government juggernaut is a hugely destructive immoral force that must be defeated. It steals our children’s futures, and even takes possession of our bodies, erasing our freedom to make our own medical decisions. It hunts down Christian dissenters from its perverse orthodoxy, compassionate groups like Little Sisters of the poor, or a Christian cake baker who declines to participate in a same-sex wedding; even pastors who refuse to marry “couples” of identical gender. In these and hundreds of other ways, it denies us as Christians the “free exercise “of our religion promised in the First Amendment. When evangelical Christians vote, they overwhelmingly vote Republican because the GOP’s freedom ideology is more aligned with their belief system than the Democrats. And those who don’t vote are, by their absence, unwittingly voting for the other side. It’s been estimated that about four million Christians who had voted for George Bush stayed home in 2014 rather than support Romney. Significantly, according to the Census Bureau, of the 220 million eligible voters (registered and not registered) nearly 60 percent didn’t vote. If even half of those 132 million voted for leaders with Christian values (and 70 to 75 percent of citizens proclaim they’re Christians) that would mean 66 million new Christian voters! Such an outpouring would dramatically change our wayward nation into one that again reveres and practices the moral principles that God has set for us. Evangelist Franklin Graham, who leads Samaritan’s Purse, the charity helping desperate Christians and non-Christians alike world-wide, says, “If we turn our nation back to God, I believe that God will help us fix the problems that we face.” Accordingly he is visiting each state with his Decision America prayer rally. “I’m going to every state to challenge Christians to live out their faith at home, in public and at the ballot box – and I will share the Gospel,” he says. “I want the evangelical Christians, the Bible-believing Christians to stand up and vote.” Although as Christians we know God is in control, our faith can’t be an excuse not to vote. Would our God want us to idly watch as the nation he so favored is demolished, or would he want us to choose leaders who uphold the standards he has put so lovingly in place for us?

Thursday, February 4, 2016

Disneyland for adults

Many people of mature years are amazed at how many young people have voted for Senator Bernie Sanders, and are enthusiastic about the socialism he preaches. Many of those older people have lived long enough to have seen socialism fail, time and again, in countries around the world. Venezuela, with all its rich oil resources, is currently on the verge of economic collapse, after its heady fling with socialism. But, most of the young have missed all that, and their dumbed-down education is far more likely to present the inspiring rhetoric of socialism than to present its dismal track record. Socialism is in fact a wonderful vision -- a world of the imagination far better than any place anywhere in the real world, at any time over the thousands of years of recorded history. Even many conservatives would probably prefer to live in such a world, if they thought it was possible. Who would not want to live in a world where college was free, along with many other things, and where government protected us from the shocks of life and guaranteed our happiness? It would be Disneyland for adults! Free college of course has an appeal to the young, especially those who have never studied economics. But college cannot possibly be free. It would not be free even if there was no such thing as money. Consider the costs of just one professor teaching just one course. He or she has probably spent more than 20 years being educated, from kindergarten to the Ph.D., before ending up standing in front of a class and trying to convey some of the knowledge picked up in all those years. That means being fed, clothed and housed all those years, along with other expenses. All the people who grew the food, manufactured the clothing and built the housing used by this one professor, for at least two decades, had to be compensated for their efforts, or those efforts would not continue. And of course someone has to produce food, clothing and shelter for all the students in this one course, as well as books, computers and other requirements or amenities. Add up all these costs -- and multiply by a hundred or so -- and you have a rough idea of what going to college costs. Whether these costs are paid by using money in a capitalist economy or by some other mechanism in a feudal economy, a socialist economy, or whatever, there are heavy costs to pay. Moreover, under any economic system, those costs are either going to be paid or there are not going to be any colleges. Money is just an artificial device for getting real things done. Those young people who understand this, whether clearly or vaguely, are not likely to be deterred from wanting socialism. Because what they really want is for somebody else to pay for their decision to go to college. A market economy is one in which whoever makes a decision is the one who pays for that decision. It forces people to be sure that what they want to do is really worth what it is going to cost. Even the existing subsidies of college have led many people to go to college who have very little interest in, or benefit from, going to college, except for enjoying the social scene while postponing adult responsibilities for a few years. Whether judging by test results, by number of hours per week devoted to studying or by on-campus interviews, it is clear that today's college students learn a lot less than college students once did. If college becomes "free," even more people can attend college without bothering to become educated and without acquiring re any economically meaningful skills. More fundamentally, making all sorts of other things "free" means more of those things being wasted as well. Even worse, it means putting more and more of the decisions that shape our lives into the hands of politicians and bureaucrats who control the purse strings. Obamacare has given us a foretaste of what that means in reality, despite how wonderful it may sound in political rhetoric. Worst of all, government giveaways polarize society into segments, each trying to get what it wants at somebody else's expense, creating mutual bitterness that can tear a society apart. Some seem to blithely assume that "the rich" can be taxed to pay for what they want -- as if "the rich" don't see what is coming and take their wealth elsewhere.

Saturday, April 9, 2016

100) Bride of Chaotica! (Star Trek: Voyager) - A hilarious pastiche of old-school science fiction serials, this story puts the Voyager crew in the middle of a space-opera fantasy gone very, very wrong.

99) Day of the Dove (Star Trek) - An alien entity wants the Enterprise crew and some Klingons to slaughter each other, and Kirk has nearly as much trouble with his own crew as with the "enemy."

98) Paradise (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - Sisko and O'Brien find themselves in a "perfect" society where no technology functions, and the society's matriarch tests Sisko's will with some pretty brutal treatment.

96) Lineage (Star Trek: Voyager) - B'Elanna and Tom are expecting a baby... but maybe they can genetically engineer it to be more human and less Klingon? More than any episode about Khan's people, this episode digs into the thorny ethics of eugenics.

95) The Most Toys (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - Data is taken prisoner by an unscrupulous collector, and the android finds out just how far he's willing to go to win his freedom.

94) Disaster (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - A calamity cuts off the different sections of the ship from each other, leaving Deanna Troi in charge, and Worf having to deliver a baby.

93) Future's End (Star Trek: Voyager) - An evil Bill Gates-type in the 1990s has gotten hold of a 29th century ship, and even the Voyager crew might not be able to keep him from changing history.

92) The Magnificent Ferengi (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - Of all DS9's "Ferengi comedy" episodes, this is one of the funniest — Quark has to rescue his mother from the Dominion, but everything goes absolutely pear-shaped and Quark has to improvise.

91) The Killing Game (Star Trek: Voyager) - The Hirogen love to hunt, so what could be better than turning Voyager into a recreation of World War II? (Lots of things. But that's what they do, anyway.)

90) Booby Trap (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - The Enterprise is trapped in a weird space trap, and Geordi can't find a solution until he makes himself a new colleague... who's the woman of Geordi's dreams.

89) Court Martial (Star Trek) - Kirk is put on trial, and along the way he shows what it really takes to command a starship.

88) Favor the Bold/Sacrifice of Angels (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - This episode is a turning point in the "Dominion War" arc. But more to the point, it features a ginormous, amazing space battle, featuring hundreds of starships.

87) Déjà Q (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - Q has lost his powers, and now he's learning to cope with being human. If he can survive the wrath of Guinan, that is.

86) Memorial (Star Trek: Voyager) - Voyager was at its best when coping with strange thought experiments, and here's a doozy: a memorial forces you to experience a terrible war first-hand. Should it be allowed to remain operational?

85) Little Green Men (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - Quark gets stranded on mid-20th century Earth, and for once even he can't figure out how to profit from this, in a hilariously weird episode.

84) Parallels (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - Worf keeps jumping to various (and highly entertaining) alternate realities, showing how different his life could be with just a few changes.

83) Timeless (Star Trek: Voyager) - One of the many "alternate future crewmembers averting a past tragedy" storylines, this one features the beautiful image of Voyager crashed into an ice planet, and Chakotay going to extremes to save his friends.

82) Conundrum (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - The entire crew of the Enterprise suffers memory loss, but luckily First Officer MacDuff is here to help. When their identities are stripped away, will the Starfleet officers still do the right thing?

81) The Enemy Within (Star Trek) - The one where Kirk gets split into good and evil versions by a transporter accident — Richard Matheson's script manages to get into some thorny questions about the nature of evil.

80) The Wounded (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - The Federation is trying really hard to have peace with the Cardassians, but some people in Starfleet aren't quite so ready to forgive and forget... and it's up to Picard to help out his enemies.

79) I, Mudd (Star Trek) - The most famous rogue in Star Trek has landed in a great spot — surrounded by beautiful androids who cater to his every whim. Except that he can't leave.

78) Remember Me (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - Dr. Crusher is faced with a mystery that gets at her fear of abandonment, but also questions of existence, when people start vanishing around her.

77) Our Man Bashir (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - The goofiest of DS9 episodes (well, one of the goofiest) sees Bashir stuck in a holosuite program where he's a James Bond-style spy.

76) Wolf in the Fold (Star Trek) - Mr. Scott is accused of being a serial killer... but the truth is a lot more bizarre.

75) The Raven (Star Trek: Voyager) - One of the best "Seven of Nine tries to become more human" episodes actually sees her coping with her memories of being part of the Borg.

74) Living Witness (Star Trek: Voyager) - Hundreds of years after Voyager visit a planet, its crew are remembered as war criminals, as shown in a historical reenactment.

73) Family (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - This episode is revolutionary, purely because it shows the consequences of a big "event" episode — Picard is still shaken by his experiences with the Borg, when he goes home to visit his family.

72) Who Mourns For Morn (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - The barfly who hangs out in Quark's bar has apparently died, but will Quark really inherit all his worldly goods?

71) A Piece of the Action (Star Trek) - One of many "visiting Earth's past on another planet" episodes, this is the funniest and also the most trenchant. Kirk and friends have to outwit a whole planet of gangsters, while teaching them the arcane game of Fizzbin.

70) Sarek (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - Peter S. Beagle wrote this episode where Spock's father reappears, and he's not the Vulcan he used to be — a bittersweet exploration of aging and loss.

69) What You Leave Behind (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - The DS9 finale packs a lot of punches, including the final showdown with the Dominion, and Sisko embracing his destiny.

68) Tin Man (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - a powerful Betazoid telepath is obsessed with a giant sentient spaceship, but also develops a friendship with Data, the only person whose thoughts he can't read.

67) Errand of Mercy (Star Trek) - The first Klingon episode is also the most daring, as Kirk is portrayed as being nearly as warlike as his foes, in the face of godlike pacifist aliens.

66) Dark Frontier (Star Trek: Voyager) - Seven of Nine starts to remember her past before she became a Borg drone, as Janeway schemes to steal from the Borg.

65) In Purgatory's Shadow/By Inferno's Light (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - One of the most shocking of the "Dominion War" storylines, this two-parter reveals a terrible secret about Bashir, and changes the balance of power in the Alpha Quadrant.

64) The Slaver Weapon (Star Trek: The Animated Series) - Written by Larry Niven, this episode sees the Enterprise crew meeting the Kzinti... and dealing with a self-aware ultimate weapon.

63) Assignment: Earth (Star Trek) - Kirk and Spock go back to the 1960s, but they're not the only interloper. This was the "backdoor pilot" for a spin-off show that never happened, but it's still bizarrely entertaining in its own right.

62) Cause and Effect (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - The one where the Enterprise keeps blowing up over and over. The most explosive, bewildering time loop ever.

61) Course: Oblivion (Star Trek: Voyager) - These alternate versions of a starship crew aren't evil — just very, very fragile. This is one of those episodes whose nihilism makes it almost like a weird dream.

60) Shore Leave (Star Trek) - One of the goofiest original-series episodes also has a major dark side, as the crew arrives on a planet where anything they imagine can become real. Anything.

59) The Quickening (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - Dr. Bashir's miracle-worker image faces an extra challenge when he faces a genetically-engineered plague.

58) Dagger of the Mind (Star Trek) - In the Federation's utopian future, the rehabilitation of criminals is much more humane. Much, much more humane. The psychological cruelty in this one is actually pretty intense.

57) The Sound of Her Voice (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - Everybody falls in love with a stranded Starfleet captain who's sent out a distress call. But can she be saved?

56) Tuvix (Star Trek: Voyager) - The Voyager crew face another huge ethical conundrum... and arguably, this time they choose wrong.

55) The Pegasus (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - Riker's long-buried secret comes to light, and he's forced to lie to Captain Picard.

54) Caretaker (Star Trek: Voyager) - Greg Cox argued (in our comments) this is the best first episode of any Trek, and he has a point: it shows Captain Janeway making two tough choices: stranding her crew, and adopting a crew of rebels.

53) The Conscience of the King (Star Trek) - This episode about a Shakespearean actor who may be a legendary mass murderer is also our first glimpse of the flaws in Trek's perfect future.

52) Relics (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - Old Starfleet engineers never die — they just come back decades later, eager to tinker with another warp engine.

51) Necessary Evil (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - The best of the episodes about the shapeshifting Odo doing detective work, because his digging turns out to reveal some dark secrets.

50) I Borg (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - Another episode with a guest star who poses a huge ethical question — the Enterprise finds a disconnected Borg drone, and tries to turn him into a weapon.

49) The Wire (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - The mysterious Garak finally has to reveal a little bit about his past to his friend Dr. Bashir, to save his life — but which stories are lies, and which ones are true? Or is there really any difference?

48) The Enterprise Incident (Star Trek) - Kirk and Spock pull an elaborate hustle on the Romulans, in an episode that shows just how unethical our heroes are prepared to be.

47) Perfect Mate (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - Picard falls for a woman (Famke Janssen!) who is destined to marry a warlord in an arranged marriage, and he has to put his feelings aside for the sake of peace.

46) Blink of an Eye (Star Trek: Voyager) - In yet another high-concept Voyager outing, the starship appears in the sky over a planet for a relatively brief time, but that's long enough for it to loom over the life and death of an entire civilization.

45) Dear Doctor (Enterprise) - Doctor Phlox relates his experience dealing with a plague affecting a relatively primitive planet, which turns out to pose an impossible dilemma.

44) It's Only a Paper Moon (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - Like "Family," this is an episode that takes a hard look at the process of recovering from trauma... and doesn't sugar-coat the truth.

43) Obsession (Star Trek) - Kirk's judgment is called into question when he becomes fixated on revenge, showing once again just how dangerous an out-of-control captain can be.

42) Hard Time (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - The best of the many "Let's torture O'Brien" episodes, in which he receives false memories of 20 years of imprisonment.

41) Rocks and Shoals (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - Sisko's crew are stranded on a planet with some of the enemy Jem'Hadar... and the Jem'Hadar's unquestioning drug-induced loyalty is put to the test, horribly.

40) In A Mirror Darkly, Parts 1 & 2 (Enterprise) - The best of the "Mirror Universe" sequels, this episode shows us a more unscrupulous version of Jonathan Archer... who's just inherited a Federation ship from the future.

39) Journey to Babel (Star Trek) - Most notable for introducing us to Spock's parents, this episode also shows a Federation diplomatic mission gone horribly wrong.

38) The Way of the Warrior (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - With the Federation facing war with the Dominion, it's a good thing the Klingons are here to help. Except sometimes your allies can be more dangerous than your enemies.

37) Lower Decks (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - This episode follows four junior officers aboard the Enterprise, and lets us see the command staff through the eyes of their underlings.

36) Galileo Seven (Star Trek) - A shuttlecraft full of people is stranded on a planet, and it appears that not all of them can survive. Good thing Spock is in charge, and he has zero hesitation about making the tough call... Right?

35) Inter Arma Silent Leges (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - Bashir has always wanted to play at being a spy... so how does he like doing it in real life? One of the episodes that exposes the terrible underbelly of the Federation.

34) The Drumhead (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - An Admiral subjects the Enterprise to an inquisition, and starts finding conspiracies behind every bulkhead, providing an object lesson in the dangers of paranoia.

33) Twilight (Enterprise) - In the future, Archer has dementia, and the human race has lost a devastating war. And both things are equally terrible to behold.

32) Trials and Tribble-ations (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - One of several time-travel episodes, this one sends Sisko's officers back to the original series episode "The Trouble With Tribbles," and provides a great love letter to Trek's history.

31) Call to Arms (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - This is the one where Sisko makes the tough choices, and a highly symbolic baseball is the only hint of Sisko's endgame.

30) Yesteryear (Star Trek: The Animated Series) - Spock travels back in time and saves himself as a young boy on Vulcan, in an episode that reveals a lot about Spock's life.

29) The Void (Star Trek: Voyager) - When Voyager gets trapped in a pocket space with a bunch of other ships that prey on each other, Janeway has to convince everybody to work together to escape. Janeway's finest hour.

28) Homefront/Paradise Lost (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - Nowadays, everybody trots out the "security versus freedom" question, but DS9 asked it first, and best, with this story of paranoia about shapeshifters in Starfleet.

27) Where No Man Has Gone Before (Star Trek) - The second Star Trek pilot is the best, facing Kirk with an impossible choice: condemn his friend to death, or risk his entire ship.

26) The Year of Hell Parts 1 &2 (Star Trek: Voyager) - The luckiest ship in the Delta Quadrant finally has really, really bad luck.

25) The Offspring (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - Data creates an android daughter for himself, but some miracles are too great to last.

24) Duet (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - Kira suspects that a visiting Cardassian is actually a notorious war criminal, and she's willing to go to insane lengths to prove it.

23) The Equinox (Star Trek: Voyager) - Captain Janeway's determination to uphold Federation principles far from home looks a lot more impressive when you meet another Starfleet crew that compromised, really badly.

22) Tapestry (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - Picard is dying of an old wound caused by his recklessness, so Q shows him what his life would be like if he'd played it safe.

21) Arena (Star Trek) - Kirk faces two impossible challenges: making a weapon from scratch, and upholding his values in the face of a murderous Gorn.

**6) The Trouble with Tribbles (Star Trek) - The funniest Trek, it also faces Kirk with the most insidious threat: an organism that's born pregnant.**