kottke.org posts about 'clivethompson'

The Netflix Prize and the Case of the Napoleon Dynamite Problem

Clive Thompson writes up the Netflix Prize -- which offers $1 million to the first team to improve upon Netflix's default recommendation algorithm by 10% -- and the vexing Napoleon Dynamite problem that is thwarting all comers.

Bertoni says it's partly because of "Napoleon Dynamite," an indie comedy from 2004 that achieved cult status and went on to become extremely popular on Netflix. It is, Bertoni and others have discovered, maddeningly hard to determine how much people will like it. When Bertoni runs his algorithms on regular hits like "Lethal Weapon" or "Miss Congeniality" and tries to predict how any given Netflix user will rate them, he's usually within eight-tenths of a star. But with films like "Napoleon Dynamite," he's off by an average of 1.2 stars.

The reason, Bertoni says, is that "Napoleon Dynamite" is very weird and very polarizing. It contains a lot of arch, ironic humor, including a famously kooky dance performed by the titular teenage character to help his hapless friend win a student-council election. It's the type of quirky entertainment that tends to be either loved or despised. The movie has been rated more than two million times in the Netflix database, and the ratings are disproportionately one or five stars.

This behavior was flagged as an issue by denizens of the Netflix Prize message board soon after the contest was announced two years ago.

Those are the movies you either loved loved loved or hated hated hated. These are the movies you can argue with your friends about. And good old 'Miss Congeniality' is right up there in the #4 spot. Also not surprising to see up here are: 'Napoleon Dynamite' (I hated it), 'Fahrenheit 9/11' (I loved it), and 'The Passion of the Christ' (didn't see it, but odds are, I'd hate it).

After finding that post, I wrote a little bit about why these movies are so contentious.

The thing that all those kinds of movies have in common is that if you're outside of the intended audience for a particular movie, you probably won't get it. That means that if you hear about a movie that's highly recommended within a certain group and you're not in that group, you're likely to hate it. In some ways, these are movies intended for a narrow audience, were highly regarded within that audience, tried to cross over into wider appeal, and really didn't make it.

 Nov 24, 2008  •  tags: movies statistics clivethompson netflix napoleondynamite

Clive Thompson on Weight Watchers as an RPG (role playing game).

As with an RPG, you roll a virtual character, manage your inventory and resources, and try to achieve a goal. Weight Watchers' points function precisely like hit points; each bite of food does damage until you've used up your daily amount, so you sleep and start all over again. Play well and you level up -- by losing weight! And the more you play it, the more you discover interesting combinations of the rules that aren't apparent at first. Hey, if I eat a fruit-granola breakfast and an egg-and-romaine lunch, I'll have enough points to survive a greasy hamburger dinner for a treat!

 Aug 19, 2008  •  tags: weightwatchers games videogames clivethompson

Clive Thompson on the new way to make it big in the music biz: spend hours a day communicating with your fans via the web. "Virtually everyone bemoaned the relentless and often boring slog of keyboarding. It is, of course, precisely the sort of administrative toil that people join rock bands to avoid."

Update: Related: How to Be a Star in a YouTube World.

 May 14, 2007  •  tags: jonathancoulton weblogs music clivethompson

Clive Thompson on the invention of new sports. "Why don't more people invent new sports? After all, we live in a golden age of play. The video-game industry is bristling with innovation." When I was in the Caribbean a few months ago, some folks on the beach were playing this newish game that they called Golf Toss. It's also called Ladder Ball and is kind of like horseshoes except your throw two golf balls on a rope instead of a horseshoe.

 May 9, 2007  •  tags: games sports clivethompson

Clive Thompson reports on the renewed interest in making photorealistic humans in games for the new consoles (Xbox360, PS3, Wii) and in the process venturing ever deeper into the Uncanny Valley.

 May 18, 2006  •  tags: clivethompson uncannyvalley games videogames xbox360 ps3 wii sony nintendo microsoft

Informal investigation of video game addiction reveals that it burns bright and fast but stops suddenly. I've noticed the suddenly vanished compulsion with my game playing as well. (via rw, i think)

 Oct 25, 2005  •  tags: games videogames clivethompson

Clive Thompson on Life Hackers in the NY Times. I'd informally heard about the benefit of larger screens on productivity (I feel more productive with a larger screen), but this article describes some study results: "On the bigger screen, people completed the tasks at least 10 percent more quickly - and some as much as 44 percent more quickly."

 Oct 16, 2005  •  tags: hacks clivethompson working business software

Clive Thompson enjoys the miniest of mini games, one-button games (more here and here): "video games that have a single button to control all the action". Many of the mini games in Wario Ware use only one control and only last 3-4 seconds.

 Oct 13, 2005  •  tags: games videogames minigames clivethompson warioware

Don Watson and Clive Thompson on the assembly-lining of thought and discourse via modern jargon. "That's the true malaise of modern jargon: It forces people to treat any subject as if it were always a managerial problem of inputs and outputs."

 Jul 19, 2005  •  tags: jargon language corporatespeak clivethompson donwatson

Clive Thompson on Stromotion, "software that breaks an athlete's fluid movements into stop-motion-style freeze-frames". You've seen it on the Olympics; Clive compares it to "ghost mode" in some video games.

 Aug 26, 2004  •  tags: video clivethompson