Octopus Returnnnnnnns!!!
Currently Listening To: Time Of My Life from the album "Time Of My Life" by Toploader
Anyone who's lived in Hong Kong in the past few years knows what an Octopus Card is. They will also know, and tell you, that it is pretty much the centre of your world.
The phenomenon is pretty well described here. I may have written in my blog before, but I spotted a good few months ago a sign which said something along the lines of "Many ticketing services will be closed as they are being prepared for Oyster Smartcards". I supposed that they wanted to differentiate their service and just took it for what it seemed - London was getting Octopus.
However sadly some of the best things about the Octopus cards, its wide acceptance, its 'top up' utility are all missing.
In fact the London Transport Octopus Card is such a complete and utter travesty that its just as well its known as the 'Oyster' Card because otherwise it would be seriously maiming the good reputation of Octopus.
For instance; The Oyster card can only be used to purchase massive fat monthly/annual tickets (monthly is only available on the tube no less). The whole idea behind Octopus was that you used it to pay for things like you would a debit or credit card and this calculation was done instantaneously, you passed your card over the sensor when you went into the station and then again when you exited the other place and the computer calculated your fair and deducted it from your account. Oyster in fact completely trashes the simplicity and time saving nature of Octopus by obliging you to use a convoluted web system to buy a big-ass travel card. So in fact all you have is a cool little beepy thingy instead of a physical card, bleh.
Equally Oyster cards can't actually hold any form of charge. They don't contain bank details and no money ever, ever, ever passes through the system. All the card knows is that you are allowed to go wherever you want within a certain zone. Topping up Octopus cards is a simple matter, you approach one of the billions of machines around Hong Kong and insert your card followed by a crispy note/Credit/Debit card and then credits your account with the money.
The fact that the Oyster card is not a cash card is also one of its most obvious shortcomings, whilst Octopus was created by the 4 main travel firms in Hong Kong (MTR, KCRC etc) for the purpose of travel payment the way it was set out meant that it gained an incredible degree of acceptance for other applications. For instance now you can buy a latté at Starbucks, order a coke from a drinks machine, pay for your groceries, pay to park your car or any number of other things by simply passing your card or wallet or bag or what have you past a reader. That simply won't happen with Oyster because it is just a glorified travel pass and has no commercial back-end.
Finally will someone point out to me why we are implementing a system designed to save precious seconds from the highly efficient train-every-2-minutes Hong Kong transport system in the London Underground which is lucky if it gets trains running with 7 minute headways? Perhaps fixing the goddamn system instead of adding new features might be a better idea, particularly when said features are just poorly implemented features enjoyed by other gamers- Wait a minute.. This is EXACTLY like Ultima Online! Transport for London are OSI incarnate!
Ultima Online is an MMORPG (a massively multiplayer online Role Playing Game) and OSI were the developers who instead of fixing gaping bugs in the system just kept on stringing players along with new exciting features.
There are many reasons why Octopus cards have reached total saturation in Hong Kong (8 million cards for 6 million people!) and none of them can be found in the Oyster card.
I also remember something else I said to my sister when I thought London Transport would be implementing an Octopus system.
"Goddamn given that a) London Transport always fucks things up and b) Octopus is the coolest thing ever, the amount of fucking up necessary to get Octopus to suck will be truly epic"
Boy was I right..
John
Octopus Returnnnnnnns!!!
Currently Listening To: Time Of My Life from the album "Time Of My Life" by Toploader
Anyone who's lived in Hong Kong in the past few years knows what an Octopus Card is. They will also know, and tell you, that it is pretty much the centre of your world.
The phenomenon is pretty well described here. I may have written in my blog before, but I spotted a good few months ago a sign which said something along the lines of "Many ticketing services will be closed as they are being prepared for Oyster Smartcards". I supposed that they wanted to differentiate their service and just took it for what it seemed - London was getting Octopus.
However sadly some of the best things about the Octopus cards, its wide acceptance, its 'top up' utility are all missing.
In fact the London Transport Octopus Card is such a complete and utter travesty that its just as well its known as the 'Oyster' Card because otherwise it would be seriously maiming the good reputation of Octopus.
For instance; The Oyster card can only be used to purchase massive fat monthly/annual tickets (monthly is only available on the tube no less). The whole idea behind Octopus was that you used it to pay for things like you would a debit or credit card and this calculation was done instantaneously, you passed your card over the sensor when you went into the station and then again when you exited the other place and the computer calculated your fair and deducted it from your account. Oyster in fact completely trashes the simplicity and time saving nature of Octopus by obliging you to use a convoluted web system to buy a big-ass travel card. So in fact all you have is a cool little beepy thingy instead of a physical card, bleh.
Equally Oyster cards can't actually hold any form of charge. They don't contain bank details and no money ever, ever, ever passes through the system. All the card knows is that you are allowed to go wherever you want within a certain zone. Topping up Octopus cards is a simple matter, you approach one of the billions of machines around Hong Kong and insert your card followed by a crispy note/Credit/Debit card and then credits your account with the money.
The fact that the Oyster card is not a cash card is also one of its most obvious shortcomings, whilst Octopus was created by the 4 main travel firms in Hong Kong (MTR, KCRC etc) for the purpose of travel payment the way it was set out meant that it gained an incredible degree of acceptance for other applications. For instance now you can buy a latté at Starbucks, order a coke from a drinks machine, pay for your groceries, pay to park your car or any number of other things by simply passing your card or wallet or bag or what have you past a reader. That simply won't happen with Oyster because it is just a glorified travel pass and has no commercial back-end.
Finally will someone point out to me why we are implementing a system designed to save precious seconds from the highly efficient train-every-2-minutes Hong Kong transport system in the London Underground which is lucky if it gets trains running with 7 minute headways? Perhaps fixing the goddamn system instead of adding new features might be a better idea, particularly when said features are just poorly implemented features enjoyed by other gamers- Wait a minute.. This is EXACTLY like Ultima Online! Transport for London are OSI incarnate!
Ultima Online is an MMORPG (a massively multiplayer online Role Playing Game) and OSI were the developers who instead of fixing gaping bugs in the system just kept on stringing players along with new exciting features.
There are many reasons why Octopus cards have reached total saturation in Hong Kong (8 million cards for 6 million people!) and none of them can be found in the Oyster card.
I also remember something else I said to my sister when I thought London Transport would be implementing an Octopus system.
"Goddamn given that a) London Transport always fucks things up and b) Octopus is the coolest thing ever, the amount of fucking up necessary to get Octopus to suck will be truly epic"
Boy was I right..
John
Posted by John Swaine at September 15, 2003 08:23 PM