Love this quote I stumbled upon today:
“Don’t think that sticking your boobs out and trying to look f***able will help. Remember you’re in a rock ‘n’ roll band. It’s not ‘f*** me’, it’s ‘F*** You!’ ”
-CHRISSIE HYNDE’S advice to female rockers
I'll leave it to you readers as to whether it applies to game clans and such.
This is the craziest, creepiest thing I've read for a while:
Woman has First Face Transplant
From the article:
In the controversial operation, tissues, muscles, arteries and veins were taken from a brain-dead donor and attached to the patient's lower face.
Doctors stress the woman will not look like her donor, but nor will she look like she did before the attack - instead she will have a "hybrid" face.
I am going to have separate nightmares about both those sentences.
Janel's got a great story up on her blog about going to the Wisconsin hearing on their proposed marriage amendment (i.e. another of the "one man, one woman" ones), and, six week old baby in t0w, waited in line to say her piece.
The best bit was this:
The chairman then asked what his name is, which was quite an openning:
His name is Turing after Alan Turing, the cryptoanalyst in World War II who broke the German U-boat code. He was also gay and for saving the modern world he was persecuted by his own country so much that he ended up killing himself.
Rock on Janel!
The surest sign that the music industry is behind the times is that those little flash programs that often start up when you pop a CD into a PC share many of the same design principals of web sites in the late nineties.
This is a very clever remake of King Kong done in The Movies. Clever use of camera tweaks, custome backgrounds, etc, to make a giant-sized gorilla in the app (which doesn't allow for scaling characters beyond human-size.
Also a good example of how the quality is going up. This has a 3-person voice-over.
On the subject of The Movies, I was talking to a friend about it yesterday and we were saying it would be fun to do a thing where you create a movie and lay it out, and send individual character scripts to friends and ahve them read them into a wave file and mail them to you. The script would be ad-lib style, where they don't know the full story or other character lines. Then compile the result and show it off at a party when they'll all be present. Maybe could be made simpler via a mod?
Gamasutra has an article by Ernest Adams entitled 'The End of Copyright" which is a good read.
Personally, I think it's got numerous flaws with it. Despite that, it's a good read and makes some good points. Don't take this as a personal stand on the "I'm for copyright" soapbox. I just think the article has some flaws and feel like pointing them out.
On the 'flaws' side of things:
OK, ranting aside, the article makes some good points:
One more thought: The fight against copyright abuse may just be a "checks and balances" thing keeping the practice in the hands of the most die-hard, while the bulk of consumers pay for content. And it may just stay that way.
On the other hand, if society really evolves to where they don't beleive in copyright, and that music, games, and movies should be freely copied, then you get a situation like we've seen in China, where major publishers just don't even bother showing up to sell product. And if it happens worldwide, then they don't even bother making it.
Which maybe wouldn't be so bad if it meant no more Backstreet Boys & Britney CD's.
You know those "non-machine-readable" verification codes people have on web forms (such as the comments section on this very blog)? Sometimes I have problems reading them.
I was struggling with a difficult-to-decypher one earlier this afternoon when it hit me:
If this were a sci-fi movie, this would be the point where I began to suspect that perhaps *I* was one of *THEM*!
A great video from a while back on Channel 9. Great lessons in the history of typography, the complexities of rendering readable fonts on screens, and on how people learned to read thousands of years before they learned to write. Well, what did they read then? You'll have to watch the video to find out.
OK, Xbox moved up to bedroom, Media center PC moved from office to media room. The latter may move back to the office when I can get my hands on an Xbox360 which might be a while.
I bought print server and ran the cable for it into the crawlspace, but didn't get into the crawlspace to do the final run to the media panel. Saving that for next weekend.
The media center PC is going from what I guess was my 'beta test' (using it to record and watch movies and one or two shows) to the full 'field test' (using it as the family's primary DVR). If all goes well for a few weeks, I'll be putting the ReplayTV up for sale on Ebay (which should just about cover all the money I've sunk into the home networking project :-)
...well, the bedroom anyway.
This was the second-to-last cable run, one of the longer ones, and certainly a tricky one.
Man, I'm getting good at this cable-fishing business. One part of it required running the fish through a 1/2 inch hole, 4 feet up a diagonal (underside of a staircase) and then catching a string I'd lowered in from the top of the diagonal - catching it blind of course!
Anyhow, only one cable run to go. Then some clean up, tie-wrapping of cables, move the xbox up to the bedroom and move the media-center PC down to the family room. Also going to get a print server for the two printers so we can access them from any PC. Then I'm done!
Erm... whereas I knew my last post's subject was BAD for gaming, this one I'm not so sure.
I don't know quite what to make of the whole suicide girls thing (remove the space between e and g and add a www. Warning: Inappropriate for work, children, etc etc). How much is genuine vs how much is 'what the fanbase wants to hear'...
Same goes for this Tom's Hardware interview. It certainly didn't need the cleavage pix on each interview page. That aside, it's an interesting interview with some 'girl gamers' and more voices to the dialog can't be all bad, right?
Fave quote:
Interviewer: OK open mic. What do you want game developers to know when they make the next blockbuster game?
Interviewee: MAKE. A F******G. SIDESCROLLER.
This rootkit thing is getting way out of control. Certainly fun to watch and makes for interesting discussion at the lunch table.
The latest is that the EFF is filing suit against Sony for the installation of spyware-ish SW on users machines without their consent, etc. Details in the announcement here.
I don't know much about the Electronic Frontier Foundation but I love their name. Has such a rogue, adventursome ring to it. Makes me picture a bunch of guys with bandanas and eye-patches in a scene somewhere between a Dr Who episode and Monty Python's Crimson Permanent Assurance.
[Update: Holy crapperoo! According to this, the Texas attorney general has joined the fray! Don't mess with Texas! Of course, Sony's back-up plan? Attack of the dancing robots!]
Walked over to lunch today and noticed something odd about the fountain outside of the building I work in. At first, being a pool owner, I thought "Algae!".
But no! They've dyed the fountain green in celebration of the 360 launch.
(note to peta-nuts: The fountain's heavily chlorinated to begin with, so no dyed-green-from-the-inside geese will be seen in the skies overhead. No need to worry)
On a related note, While I (a) hate FPS games on consoles, and (b) have been among those commenting that next-gen consoles (360 included) are going to have a hard time living up to the "next-gen" expectations of end users, I saw Call of Duty 2 being demo'd on a 360 at Fry's this weekend have to say, it' looked pretty effing good! The gameplay looked pretty similar to existing WWII shooters, but the amount of debris/particles/general chaos/etc going on made it feel a lot more "Saving Private Ryan". Anyhoo, they're on display in stores, so check one out and judge for yourself!
This popped up on the news this morning. Not an outright disbarrment, given that he's actually licensed in Florida, but at least it's a blow to his credibility (personal, I can't beleive he has any at all, given the crazy things he's done and said).
Via Gamastra.
I was perusing the library of MSR talks that get recorded and put online, and amongst the speakers they had was none other than Bruce Cambell of zombie-killin' fame.
He's actually a pretty articulate and amusing speaker.
Amongst some choice answers during his Q&A:
Q: What was your favorite movie to make?
A: Difficult question. I have a beleif that movies that are easy to make are difficult to watch.
Q: (Something about hollywood vs b-movies)
A: War of the Worlds, Bewitched, Spiderman, Batman Begins (again!?!).... Hollywood IS making B-movies. Just with more money. Then they wonder why no one's going to the theaters.
He's also not afraid to mince words about his thoughts about various hollywood celebrities.
Too bad it's not linked externally, but for MS-ites, it's worth a look. Some observations about the indie film scene have some insights that will be useful for the games world as well.
Yesterday evening I did what will probably be the longest cable run in my home networking adventure. From the main panel to my wife's workstation, which is on the far end of the house.
Because the house has been expanded from it's original size, there are multiple crawlspaces, and this required doing full-on commando crawls through two of them. I'm sore today! Plus my forearms are embedded with fiberglass insulation. Should have worn sleeves!
Anyhow, those two connections added means eight down, four to go. And those four are in three runs, so not long to go now.
Related to the last post.
Seems Gramma's grandson wrote Mr Chris Crawford about his piece in The Escapist on Women in Games. I guess Gramma had some issues with it, or her son did, or... well who cares.
I don't know who's right or wrong. I don't know if I care.
What I do know is that a gen-ewe-wine, blue-ribbon, class-A, five-alarm flame war between Son-o-son-o-gramma & Mr Crawford ensued. And I likes me a flame war! Yee haw!
link
If you ain't seen her yet, you're gonna:
MTV Interview
Blog
Not sure if this "exception" breaks the stereotype, or just reinforces it (in that it's such an exception).
Either way, there's something funny about a little old lady swearing like sailor at Psychonauts or GTA3.
Earl was right. Carson Daily is really onto something with this whole Karma thing he came up with.
I got an email the other day from someone at Intel looking for a forwarding address, since a Game Gems royalty check showed up at my old Intel work address. So we sorted that out, and my shiny pennies are on their way to Bellevue.
I get home, and there's a letter in my mailbox. It's from an accounting nanobot in the Intel machine that seems to think they overpaid me by a few hundred bucks on my last paycheck, and oh, we'd like the money back, thank you. No explanation of WHY they think this was an error, just "please send us money".
Anyhoo. Funny how these things happened in such close proximity to one another.
[Yeah, I know I'm using 'karma' as accurately as Alanis Morrisette uses 'irony', the word I should in fact be using, but hey, whatdayawant?]
Will (linked over on the right) has opted out of the "blogosphere" (shudder - hate that term).
Not sure his reasons, but oh well, so be it. Will, we hardly knew ye!
This led to an impossible slippery slope of to-do's on my part.
- Should remove link to Will's blog from my template.
- Hmm... should probably update that whole list. Some are rarely updated (Jane, Jen...) or impossibly slow (Tim, what are you hosted on? an abacus?) , and there are others whose feeds are on my www.start.com page but whom I haven't gotten around to linking to on my blog. (aside, I guess start.com was the predecessor for www.live.com ? Should probably start using that but there doesn't seem to be a migration tool...)
- So then I start thinking that other bits of my blog are out of date: Book lists (those were NOT the last books I read, btw).
- Which leads me to a bunch of other things I've been meaning to do regarding my online presence: register a domain, more powerful blogging service and/or software, book reviews, photo repository (flickr? host my own?), have been thinking about dabbling in podcasting... the list goes on. For that matter, the name should change. I don't write much code anymore, and the pitching manure thing was a tongue in cheek comment about my former life as an evangelist.
Now all that being said, let's get back to fundamentals: I'm busy; I enjoy doing this but don't want it to suck too much time (and I just don't want it to suck too much, period); and I want to create as much content as I like while learning as little about the plumbing as I need to. I have very little interest in authoring scripts, become a .NETophile, etc.
So, what to do?
Tentative plan now is to spend some spare cycles over the next month studying different options. Over Xmas break I can probably migrate stuff if I in fact decide to do so. KimBlog2.0 anyone?
In the meantime, I welcome suggestions on content, likes/dislikes, and what options y'all use. Also, anyone tried migrating from blogger to something else and taken all their content with them? Possible?
OMG!
Some days, all is right with the world.
Corey vs Corey Katamari rock cover MP3.
Via I'm a Human Inbox.
Adam Lake has an article that just popped up on Gamastura on game engine multi-threading basics. I know a little about the background since it was started while I was at Intel (nice to see the gears of the Intel & CMP machines still mesh with lightning speed) and expect it will be a good read, though I haven't given it a read yet.
Sumit Mehra, a soon-to-be-microsoftie making games in India (which I didn't know we even did!?) came across my blog and dropped me some mail. I went over and looked at his, and he had a post talking about what people do in elevators. Stare at floor, ceiling, read, whistle, etc. He also talked about what he thinks about and asked what others do. I'm cut-n-pasting my response because, well, I'm rather fond of it.
---
I like to think about elevator design. And for that matter, marketing. And construction. And maintenance...
Who built this elevator? Why did the builder choose this company over another? Why did they pick this design over what was probably a catalog of options? Was it strictly capacity? Aesthetics? Technical Features?
Oh boy, how I love to think about the design side. Many pet peeves here. Algorithms: Is each elevator autonomous, or do they know "elevator number 2 is stopping at floor 5, so I don't need to" or do they work independantly? How could it be made more efficient and convenient? If it's a really tall building, do they factor in acceleration and velocity into the algorithm, or just on/off?
Design Peeve: In North America, if someone accidentally presses a button for the wrong floor, then everyone must stop at that floor and wait akwardly while doors open & close. In Japan, if you hit the wrong button, you can PRESS IT AGAIN TO SWITCH IT OFF!! What a simple design improvement!! Why has that not been adopted world-wide? Is it patented or something? :-)
I guess in short, I think about how this elevator got here, and how, if I were to build one, how would I build it cheaper, better, lower-maintenance, etc. How would I improve the world around me given the chance.
Plenty of stuff to do in elevators beside stare at the floor...
OK, people have had enough of sophmoric game content, but who expected this:
My friend Marty send me a link to this and I cannot look away!!!
The music totally makes it. Need to get a soundtrack like that for my next The Movies project!
Thanks Marty. Thanks a lot.
Thanks to Steve Lacey for pointing out that I was just linking to an Atom feed and not an RSS feed. I now have both. See lower right. Pardon my net-ignorance. We now return you to regularly scheduled programming.
...at this dinner would have been awesome.
More details here.
I shouldn't complain though. One of the privileges of my job is that I get to go on the road and have dinners with a bunch of interesting people - several of whom are linked to on the right. Go ahead, click!
I'll be one of a thousand people to link to this, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't
Raph Koster's presentation from the Korean dev conference is a must read/view.
10 minutes of your time will be time well spent.
Link.
I've been thinking about how a bunch of things he mentions (evolution of web; services; niche proliferation) are going to affect gaming (already are), but he puts a different spin on it and as usual, tells a lovely story in the process.
OK, media center extender now set up. Able to watch movies in one room that were recorded in another room. Rock! (Oh sorry. Rawk! Have to obfuscate everything now that I'm so L337!)
After Sunday's NINE (!) hour marathon session of fishing ethernet cable from my media panel (through crawlspace, up through wall, outside house, through conduit, into walls...) to the office, I finally went "live" with the network yesterday.
Media panel now houses the cable modem, wireless access point & router, and 10/100 switch (which will be swapped for a gigabit switch when money allows). Six of the eventual 12-ish ports are live, and my gaming rig, Media Center PC, Xbox, ReplayTV and work laptop are all connected.
Still much work to do, but it's nice to FINALLY have something connected, and things are a lot more clean looking with cables just plugged into the walls and not running along floors with routers & switches sitting around on desktops.
I'm going to hook up the media extender kit for the xbox now, cause I wants to see me some networked DVR action!
I don't own an iPod ('cause dat's treason), but for those that do, I got an email from a friend about a new biz they started up:
http://www.upgrademyipod.com/
It's "Pimp my Ride" for pods!
[A week ago I attended the Montreal Game Summit. I'm only getting around now to posting some notes from the sessions, and will do the posts, one-per]
Taking the GDChallenge format from GDC, this closing session pitted four designers (Eric Zimmerman, Ubisoft’s Heather Kelley, AreaCode’s Frank Lantz, and a fourth competitor who’s name escapes me and who’s design wasn’t that great anyway) against each other, challenging them to design a game involving sex as a core gameplay element.
o Zimmerman’s design was a cop-out, in that it wasn’t a game design at all. However, he gets points for the Carrottop-like prop-comic show that he put on. His opening statement (and thus the copout) was something akin to “what if rather than a game with sex in it… what if games themselves had sex?”. He then picked volunteers out of the audience, had them wear nametags like Donkey Kong and Asteroids, gave them each a “DNA strand” which was a clothes-hanger-scool-project type of thing with all the core game elements of these game titles on cue cards. He then had them hold a mock-fornication behind a shower curtain, while an assistant randomly mixed the DNA elements. Madlib-style game designs were born. His idea was to auto-generate and release these designs out on the internet and do a selective breeding thing to keep only those that were deemed fun. It was a great, humourous presentation, but a copout nonetheless.
o Heather Kelley’s design was for a game for the DS called “Lapis”, aimed at teenage girls. The goal of the game was to ‘stimulate’ a cartoon bunny in a rhythmic fashion generating (on the second screen) ever more elaborate fantasy imagery (supposedly things that might go through one’s head during, ahem, stimulation: Ice cream. Shoes. Etc. etc. Culminating in fireworks if successful. The idea was that the game would teach young girls a thing or two about sex *without their even realizing it* (reminiscent of Neal Stephenson’s Diamond Age, I might add). I give her points for that part, and picking the DS as a platform because “a game about sex should be personal and private”). However, I wasn’t a fan of the design because (a) she reduced it all physical stimulation of certain locale (when viewed from above, the bunny looked like something else entirely, and (b) it really didn’t look that fun after all. Heather won, but I think this was partly due to home turf advantage (large Ubisoft contingent in the crowd) and partly due to, quite frankly, a largely male game developer audience being quite excited about a female designer talking about how to properly stimulate the female, ahem, anatomy.
o Frank Lantz’s design was also well received, and I think it should have won. Frank designed a mod for Spore, called ‘Sporgy’. The premise was that the procedurally-generated creatures in Spore meet in a secret underground club to participate in wonton sex escapades as an escape from the mundane lives they lead. The multiple limbs and joints generated in the rest of the game would suddenly turn out to serve as different erogenous zones. Two player’s creatures would couple and it would become a kind of beat-matching game, with both players needing to exercise a kind of rhythmic thrusting with the mouse, and do so with matching rhythms. Doing so would unlock more ‘zones’ and score points. I thought it was a brilliant design, and the most in keeping with the theme of the challenge.
[A week ago I attended the Montreal Game Summit. I'm only getting around now to posting some notes from the sessions, and will do the posts, one-per]
GameLab’s Eric Zimmerman on ‘Game Design as Critical Practice’. Eric is an interesting speaker. Best known for some of his GameLab titles (Loop, DinerDash, to name a couple), Eric also wrote Rules of Play, an academic text on game design. Eric spoke about problems facing the medium, the industry, and the culture, and asked whether the same rules that apply to game design can apply to these systems as well. Games at their root are comprised of rules. “play” happens when we experiment with the results of taking different courses of action within those rules, not breaking them, but perhaps exploiting them or pushing their limits. If this results in interesting gameplay, can the same not be said for the ‘rules’ by which the business operates? He raised some interesting ideas, but I’m not quite sure which can be put into action. I did really like his demonstration of rules systems: He did a 600 person MMRPS tourney (massive multiplayer rock paper scissors). I was eliminated first round.
[A week ago I attended the Montreal Game Summit. I'm only getting around now to posting some notes from the sessions, and will do the posts, one-per]
Nintendo’s Hideki Konno “What we have learned from Nintendogs”. This was an interesting look into how Nintendogs went from concept (Miyamoto said “do something with dogs”) to retail product, and gave some insight into Nintendo and how they work. The biggest eye-opener for me was the fact that the game designers themselves (not the game PM or marketing team – the actual designer) sits down with the marketing folk to talk about how the game should be sold. Nintendogs multiple SKUs didn’t start out as a money-making scheme. It started out as the designers saying “we want the area of the store to feel like a pet store”. The original plan called for fifteen different SKUs but it was decided that three-to-five would be manageable.
[A week ago I attended the Montreal Game Summit. I'm only getting around now to posting some notes from the sessions, and will do the posts, one-per]
Clint Hocking’s “Next… The Game Designer’s Generation”. Was this a presentation, or was this performance art? Without a doubt my favorite session of the conference. Clint gave a first rate scripted performance set to slides, very much in the “beyond bullet points” style (BTW, while I don’t have a recording of this presentation, a similarly styled presentation about another subject altogether is Dick Hardt’s Identity 2.0 Presentation which you can see here. A must view for all PPT-fu wannabes). In his presentation, Clint talked about Hollywood vs games, military history from the Hippolytes through to current day, game design and player freedom, evolution of the industry, ludology & game academics, weather phenomena, the Apollo program, JFK, and… well it really went over quite a bit, but all of it was used to make some good points:
o Games have grown up and become a viable medium in which artists can express themselves and consumers can choose to spend their money and time. Because of this, we very much compete with movies.
o The industry’s response has been to become more like movies.
o The movie industry is better at being movies than we are. They are also bigger. They will crush us like a grape.
o We can learn from military history and many examples of how smaller forces won through being more nimble and using new technology & tactics to gain the advantage.
o Interactivity and player agency are our advantage. We must use them to be nimble. This means giving player CHOICE.
o Games are evolving in some cases to give players LESS choice (guide them through a story), not more.
o The imperative for designers to SURRENDER AUTHORSHIP AND CONTROL! The more you put it in the hands of players, the more we let consumers do what Hollywood never can never let them do.
o Artists and Programmers have gotten us to where we are today. It is the game designers turn to take the lead role in the next battle in the war against Hollywood over the next decade.
o There was some good ludology background on different “strata” on the spectrum between authored experience and player agency, and Clint put many games up against this litmus strip to illustrate examples.
[A week ago I attended the Montreal Game Summit. I'm only getting around now to posting some notes from the sessions, and will do the posts, one-per]
Neil’s keynote was named “Can a Game Make You Cry?”. In it, he talked about the fact that (his assertion) emotional involvement requires believable characters, and believable characters require high quality character technology (i.e. money). Therefore, you need to make stuff that appeals to mainstream audiences (broad-appeal genres, popular licenses) to justify the volume, and “innovation” to make critics salivate. I believe the EA approach is AN approach, but to say it’s the only approach is ludicrous. Two issues I have with his talk:
o I’d argue that what he was claiming was “innovation” was really “controlled innovation on the micro-level”. i.e. one new mechanic or technology in a very proven formula. If you want to claim that’s innovation, well, fine. I think it’s bull. Don’t get me wrong, I believe it’s an absolutely sound business decision to NOT innovate and instead be a “fast follower”, but don’t claim the ‘innovator’ title.
o Waterworld was big-budget. I didn’t empathize with the characters, and it didn’t affect me. Bambi didn’t have believable characters. At no point did I say “I think that’s a REAL DEER!!!”, and yet it moves everyone that sees it. Big budget production can help but is NOT a pre-requisite nor a guarantee of emotional involvement of the player. This was best summed up by what, for me, was the best moment of the conference: The guy holding up his kid's drawing (which I blogged last week).
[A week ago I attended the Montreal Game Summit. I'm only getting around now to posting some notes from the sessions, and will do the posts, one-per]
EA’s Doug Church on Artifical Intelligence: I've known Doug a while and this was an updated version of a talk I’ve seen him give before (an older version can be found here). Still, there was new content and some illuminating discussion afterward. The talk wasn’t a technical one so much as a summary of the ‘state of the union’, and thoughts on future directions. Here are the takeaway points:
o Game AI can been thought of at multiple levels (e.g. getting a character to do something immediate like ‘pick up a wrench’, do a higher level action like ‘pick up a wrench in order to hit a player’, or do even higher level actions/goals like ‘find a way to get money’ which might mean picking up a wrench to hit someone that looks like they might have money).
o Advances in the rest of game tech has meant that TREMENDOUS advances in AI have “left us standing still”. i.e. moving a sprite from x1,y1 to x2,y2 is far easier than moving an articulated, IK-driven 3D character across an arbitrary 3D landscape to a destination. We can now do that. However, we’ve only still moved a character from Point 1 to Point 2.
o Even if we were able to work on some of the higher level problems (he lists several like NPC motivation, goals, etc), we’ve bragged & marketed our way out of any meaningful claims – so how do you sell it? i.e. the business of games works against advances in game AI
o One area he’s sees as promising is the development of AI to guide/accentuate “supporting actor” type characters. Ones that accompany the lead actor (the player) through story, allowing them to grow better vested in the story. (Think HL2). Flaws in these characters stand out even more, so better that they behave well. (Personal note: Success in this area won’t lead to marketing of “best AI ever!”, but rather “best story ever!” and “best game ever!”, since the AI if well done will just lead to the player being better vested in the story).
[A week ago I attended the Montreal Game Summit. I'm only getting around now to posting some notes from the sessions, and will do the posts, one-per]
Warren Spector’s Opening Keynote: Warren covered a number of issues facing the industry ranging from violence in games, lack of innovation, lack of alternative business models, lack of genres & content to appeal to non-gamers. He tied these all together under a unifying message of the industry being at an inflection point on many fronts, and that the outcome would determine whether we become an accepted mainstream cultural medium like movies & music, or whether we become marginalized like comic books, radio drama, or vaudeville. The most interesting part in my opinion was that he made the point that we need to aggressively tackle the issue of violence in games. “If we don’t, it will be legislated FOR us, by those who fear it”. In other words, it’s not just a problem we have to deal with – it’s a problem we are creating and shaping. We have a responsibility to address it. Warren’s presentation can be downloaded here.
If things weren't crazy enough... people are using the 'StarMaker' tool to do celeb likenesses:
Eg. Pretty good Tom Cruise, Peter Molyneux likenesses. Those forums have attempts at everyone from Jesus to Hitler, Dubya to Cleese.
Way cool!
I've watched a bunch of movies on Lionhead's site and have seen at least two (Life and Times of a Pharmaceutical rep, Le Cornucopia et Odium - man that clown dude FREAKS ME OUT) movies about people going postal.
Maybe the Movies will be the next PostSecret?
There are plenty of detailed reviews out there, so I'll keep this short:
It's really two apps in one: A tycoon game with a"movie mogul" setting; and a consumer-level machinima tool. You can play the game without really caring about your movies (you actually arent required to view them if you don't want to). You can *kind of* use the machinima side of it without playing the game. However, you do need to know how the UI works, and certain 'eras' of film making are only unlocked after playing.
I'm running it on a beta of Windows Vista, and had no bugs or crashes, though the ingame movie viewer was running a little choppy.
9 on 10 for The Movies. My only complaints are too much micromanagement (typical for this genre), and the problems I had with the speed of the ingame movie player. Otherwise, I loved it!
Alice Taylor points us to these PSP ads.
- The Talkman ads show exactly the type of "SPEAK TO MY AVATAR!!!" scenarios I was eluding to after TGS. Funny.
- The logan's-run-esque "playstation portable" slogan at the end of each is funny.
I went and bought it at lunch. Can't wait to get home and try it out.
Meanwhile, Lionhead's community site has plenty of flicks getting posted (as in 'per minute' plenty). Some are quite clever. I liked this one, which definitely has some Looney Tunes influences.
Metacritic reviews for The Movies are in and looking pretty good. The average is being dragged down a bit by a 70 score from Gamespy. The rest are all 80-100.
The gamespy review is worth looking at though, since they post a couple movies the reviewer created with the game.
I'm soooo going to buy this game!
I love the Flash-based attention getters that some job applicants are doing these days. Not a substitute for knowledge & experience, but certainly shows some panache.
Saw this "Mr Vista" one today off of JobsBlog. Still doesn't beat my favorite though!
There was a book reading at University bookstore in Bellevue tonight for Smartbomb by Heather Chaplin and Aaron Ruby. Ed Fries is one of the people covered in the book and was also there for the reading and Q&A. I figured I'd go because there might be some good conversation to be had and it's a ten minute drive from home.
First off, I envy those people that have photographic face/name memories. I met Ed Fries something like 6 or 8 months ago, pre-lasik, in a meeting for an hour, and he remembered my name. I was impressed. Anyhoo.
So, there was some interesting conversation about the (gag) 'arrival' of games into mainstream culture over the past few years, the rock star phenomena (two words, not capitalized), and other such things.
I asked why the book focused mainly on the past decade, and not on the earlier rise and fall(s) of the industry (arcade, 1st wave home console & computer, etc). They said they did discuss it a bit in the first chapter, but that that first wave didn't have the same kind of culture impact that games are having today. I thought they skirted the question, since that first wave definitely impacted pop culture. Anyone that has seen a tuxedo-clad Bond wandering between the Pacman and Galaxian machines in Never Say Never Again can tell you that! (Did people ever wear tuxedos and evening gowns to arcades? :-)
Then there was other conversation, and I bought a book to be polite and because I have an addiction to buying books.
On the way home, I was thinking more about the 'first era' thing. I'm sure I'm not the first to say it but I beleive there are a huge number of parallels between our industry today and the state of the industry at that time. e.g.
I'm not saying that I beleive another arcade-industry or early-console-industry style crash is on the horizon. I'm actually not a beleiver in the "innovation is dead" rant-du-jour that Costikiyan and co have made de rigeur as of late.
However, I do beleive there's risk there. I do think it's worth asking what happens if either this Xmas or next, people look at the games on their next-gen consoles and say "hmm... kinda looks the same. don't think I'll bother".
Again, I don't think the risk is high that this is going to happen. I *do* think, though, that like any risk, we should ask ourselves "...what if?"
The level of line extension in consumer goods these days is just out of control.
Line extension (i.e. "ChunkyCake is very successful - let's do Diet ChunkyCake for fat people and those that fear becoming them, and ExtremeChunkyCake for Extreme People(tm)") has it's place. It can let you take a particular brand in one segment and either further tap that segment or tap into a new segment.
However, taken too far, you just start confusing people and cannibalizing your own market share. Cases in point from the grocery store run this evening:
Anyhow. Rant over, but perhaps there's a lesson to be learned here for our industry? Sims folk, take heed!
I dropped by EB games today before a lunch meeting (had a few minutes to kill) and was surprised to see that Lionhead's "The Movies" goes on sale later this week. They said they'd have it in Wednesday.
I'm really looking forward to seeing how it turned out following the demo I got last E3. Not sure if I should play it out of the gate or wait for the sure-to-be-released patch people have claimed I should expect with Lionhead titles :-)
This item on GamesIndustry.biz reports that Jack Thompson has had to appear in court to defend his right to practice law in Alabama, where he's licensed.
Lawyer jokes aside, lawyers have to comport themselves with a level of integrity and civility. Something Thompson has CLEARLY been far out of bounds on.
I hope he gets disbarred so the violence-in-games debate can come back to earth and perhaps reach reasonable levels of discourse.
During yesterday's Neil Young keynote, he talked about "innovation" (more rant on this later - innovation my ass) and the keynote was titled "can a game make you cry?"
The basic message was "immersion requires big budget high quality HD-type content if people are going to buy it".
During the Q&A, a french canadian developer got up there. Not a wimpy looking guy, your typical tatoo'd programmeur-du-jour, and said the following (written in phonetic-quebecois-english for full effect)
"You talk about de need for critical acclaim. And you talk about de need for de big boodget. Der is a painting in France called de monah-leesah. It is famous. It might be very expensif too, if you can buy it, but you can't buy it."
Then he pulls out a peice of loose leaf paper from his pocket and unfolds it, holding it up in front of 600+ people, to show a cartoon drawing. Noticably choked up, he says, "Dis is a picture dat my son drawed for me. This drawing makes me cry, and de monah leesah doesn't effect me one damn bit".
I think that Neil thought he was a crackpot, and gave a tepid answer. I thought it was the most profoud comment of the conference. Spore team, you listening? User-created content has a whole lot more impact if you love the creator.
Or as Casey Muratori would put it - And now the dancing turns German.
There was an announcement today that Pandemic & Bioware merged, that Elevation is sinking $300M into them, and they'll aim to become a new 'uber studio'.
There's a lot of talk at the game summit about this announcement.
It may be premature to say, but this looks like it may be looked back upon as a defining moment for the industry.
Attention publishing oligopoly: You are no longer the only belle at the ball!
Day one was awesome. Really top notch content for a "regional" show. Warren Spector's talk was great, as was Doug Church's. Neil Young's talk was pretty good (better than I was expecting)
Clint Hocking's talk was first rate performance art. I hope to hell someone filmed it.
Katherine Isbister's talk was pretty good too.
I'll write up a detailed accounting in the next few days, but I am really jazzed about teh quality of the sessions. Hope day two is as good.
Continued my home networking adventures this weekend:
Next step is a difficult cable run from the room I use as my office down to the crawlspace under the house. Not sure how I'm going to do it, but would like to avoid running it outside the house. Once I get that one done, it can go live (even though I have a couple other lines to run.
What else happened this weekend? Took the kids to a twins-group halloween party (pix sometime soon. Very cute); did some work around the house; went to the gym (nothing injured this time!), carved 4 pumpkins (more tiring than the gym!), and caught up on work a bit.
Still have some work to do before leaving for the Montreal game summit this week.
The actor that played Sulu on the original Star Trek series has, at the age of 68, come out of the closet and proclaimed he's gay.
I've got nothing against homosexuals, and I applaud his coming out late in life which must have been difficult.
However, there are too many jokes here not to speak up.
OK, I'll stop now.
Two great things I came across this week:
I haven't played it yet, but I saw that HL2: Lost Coast is out on Steam.
...and that they've added a "director's cut" type of play mode, where the developer walks you through the thing as you are playing.
Why the F no one thought of this before I have no idea. Nice job Valve!
Bill Hill is blogging.
I don't know Bill, though he does reside in the same MS Campus building as I do. He works on the team that does 'advanced reading technologies' (font tech like ClearType and other text-on-screen-lookin'-pretty type of stuff).
He's smart, interesting, and *deliciously pedantic* when it comes to typography. Read his blog and check out the cool channel 9 videos he's done (interesting video on a number of subjects, Nice story about where his passion comes from, pedantry about why only one space should go after a period - something I've ranted about before to friends!
Anyhow, he's a real character. Check it out when you have the time.
My goodness. What's the world coming to?
Interesting to see him do this kind of open forum. The caliber some of questions the kids came up with are really impressive.
You can view clips (maybe the whole show? there's quite a bit) here.
Steve Lacey pointed me to Time's Top 100 Novels of All Time.
It's a sad statement that I've only read FIVE of them. (Not counting the Judy Blume book that a girl in the fourth grade read me the dirty bits of during some memory-forging after-school escapes. *snicker*)
Nice to see Snowcrash on the list.
*I suppose you could say it's 102, and that I've read seven of them - Since lord of the rings is three books, if you want to be pedantic about it.
I'm sure the new Doom movie sucks, however, I did enjoy seeing The Rock's appearance on the Daily Show. He carried out a big plastic BFG with him, and made it apparent that they both played the original game.
JS: "Oh my god, that's the BFG!"
TR: "Yep, the Big F***ing Gun!"
JS: "THAT's the thing you use when your wife tells you it's time to save your game and come to bed!"
Ha ha! Amen brother!
[Update: Jason Della Rocca was nice enough to send the link to the interview on comedy central]
A while back I'd mentioned that I was planning to wire the house with gigabit ethernet. Two things happened that delayed this:
1) After going into the crawlspace under the house to see how stuff should be routed, we noticed we had a little rodent problem. Exterminator was brought in, holes sealed up, insulation replaced, etc, etc. Problem now (we hope) solved.
2) Anyone who's ever done any running of cables in an existing house can tell you: it's a heck of a job. Takes a long time, lots of crawling around in crawlspaces, frustrating fishing of wires blindly, etc. So, I was basically procrastinating on actually starting, because once I did, it was going to take a while.
Well, I started.
Interesting article up on CNET from Declan McCullagh about the current effort in Congress to pass a shield law for journalists (good) and how "bloggers" are being excluded from that (bad?).
It's an interesting read as there are a lot of issues to be considered: Who says who is or isn't a journalist? Is the average citizen unable to invoke first amendment rights without fear of retribution, since he's not shielded by a press badge?
I understand the other side of the arguement. It's so easy for any joker to get up on the web these days and start spouting off (ahem, case in point: look what you are reading!). There needs to be some measure of accountability for irresponsible reporting, and this should be balanced against the protection afforded to the press.
A somewhat analogous example: Trade-only conferences/exhibitions usually have a fairly steep entry fee to (a) make up for the fact that they don't actually sell goods on teh show floor and (b) to keep the average enthusiast away. In order to encourage press coverage, they normally give free or discounted entry to press. Back when the internet boom kicked off, everyone and their uncle was showing up at Comdex/E3/etc and saying "I'm press. I edit sometechiesite-dot-com." After a while this was getting out of hand and their press attendance was up 1000%. Eventually they had to only grant press passes to "established" press. I'm not even sure how they police it today.
Anyhow, there are good points on both sides of the issue, so it makes for a good read and good debate.
Beautiful day here. Sunny and warm.
Took the kids to Bellevue's Downtown Park, where they played on the playground equipment (fun), ran across the fields (fun), fed their cereal to the ducks (super fun) and topped it off by coming to a giant pile of leaves that they decided it would be fun to jump and roll in. YOu'd think someone had showed them that was their purpose. Anyhow, that was awesome.
Super Saturday.
Via BoingBoing
[Edit: Someone (correctly) pointed out that I didn't credit the original author & source. Posted on b3ta by FoldsFive. Oops, sorry! Fixed]
Tim Cherna (friend and homme-du-pomme) points us to BandeApart.fm a french canadian program, and it's Podcast (same link) Baladodiffusion.
The place for cool indie french canadian sh$t!
Anyhow, I haven't given it a listen yet, but I love that all the latest web terms have been given F.C. equivalents:
Blog = Blogue
Podcast = Baladodiffusion
Blogosphere = blogosphère
And it's not just made up, the language police have come up with the proper terms. The also recommend AVOIDING the usual quebecois trend to "frenglish" a word by taking the english word and doing french conjugation of it (e.g. 'to podcast' becomes 'podcaster', as in 'nous podcastons ce soir'.
That dictionary is going to keep me busy tonight! Next up, graphics terminology!
Aouai! C'est mal commode, tabarnaque! 'cris!
Google reports third quarter results:
... revenues of $1.578 billion for the quarter ended September 30, up 96% compared to the third quarter of 2004…
Yes, rub your eyes a bit. That's 96%.
The stock was up $36 today. Yep. you read right. $36. ~11%.
That means their market cap jumped by like $6B in one day.
Holy tap-dancing traders, batman!
Robin Hunicke posted this comment on Quake4. Not sure where she got it from but OUCH!
(too good not to cut and paste)
Quake 4 has everything!
It’s got the graphics of Doom 3, the setting of Quake 2, squadmates just like Opposing Force,rail shooter segments like Sin,an airboat sequence just like Half-Life 2,mechs like Chronicles of Riddick,a recharging shield system just like HALO,a hot chick computer voice who coordinates the troops just like HALO,aliens holding glowing energy shields just like HALO,the grenade effect from FEAR,the shellshock effect from Call of Duty,a Scary Level without any enemies, just like Aliens vs Predator, and cheesy music stings when “surprising” things happen,just like every B-grade horror flick ever.
The only thing they didn’t put in was something to make Quake 4 a game in its own right.And I think they missed something else –what is it? –Oh yeah,the fun.
Maybe they’re saving that for the expansion pack.
---
OUCH!
OK, so a while ago I ranted about James Burke and his books & videos.
I found out the local library has the connections series (1,2,3) on DVD. Unfortunately, they are all sporadically out, so renting them in order is practically impossible (each of the series is 10 episodes on 5 DVDs. That's 15 DVDs and 30 hours of viewing!
This week Alisa and I watched Connections I, episodes 7 through 10. Simply awesome stuff.
And although it's somewhat dated in appearance (connections 1 was released in 1979), it was remarkably ahead of it's time. In just the four episodes we watched, he uses history to point to implications of current day (for then) inventions and their implication on the future. Amongst those he mentions:
Wow. Pretty ahead of his time. Sure, he wasn't the only guy thinking about these things, but that all five of those bullets are nailed in just 4 hours of a 30 hour set of discs in pretty awesome.
Go get it at your local library! Or go spend the $450 bucks you'll need to buy the whole thing! Beleive me, I'm tempted...
The guys at ChessBase, as discussed on gamasutra.
I, for one, hope it's for a "TO HELL WITH YOU AND THIS BLASTED GAME!" board-and-table-flipping-in-a-fit-of-rage mode!
Seriously. C'mon Kathy! Focus, focus!
Robin Hunicke points us to this interesting post on HRIP (High Rate of Idea Production), a term used for those of us who are afflicted with the condition of having ideas far faster than we can implement them.
I definitely am a long-time sufferer!
Before I sound too much like I'm tooting my own horn, I'll be the first to point out that the HRIP-afflicted are only a short lapse of self-discipline away from being DOPES(Distracted Often, Perpetually Exchanging Specialties)
I finally got around to reading David Hayward's article on videogame aesthetics.
It's a good read, and a good tour of notable visual style landmark games, so I recommend reading it.
However, I do take issue with the assertion (actually indirectly/conditionally made) that there isn't anything happening in any direction other than photo-real. If you include indie and casual games, then you could argue that the MAJORITY of games being developed fall into the abstract or iconified ends of the 'triangle'.
Granted, the big money is funding photo-real titles, but since when did that become an issue when appreciating aesthetics? People routinely point to indie films at Sundance or Cannes as examples of something fresh/new/different. You don't hear others say "not a $100M hollywood title! Doesn't count!"
Also, it's a nit, but he lumps a bunch of the "cel-shaded" titles together as imitators of Jet Set Radio/Jet Grind Radio. (1) They didn't set the stage for that, a bunch of siggraph papers and other research did (including some from Adam Lake and other friends at Intel research), and Jet Grind was just one of the first to market. Likely all those others were already headed to pressing by the time they shipped. Also, some, like XIII, innovated with game-implementation of the comic visual style in their own way (e.g. in-set panels dramatacizing head-shots - love it!).
So, that's my 2c. Read it anyway, but you've been warned.
Sam Javanrouh's photoblog is phenomenal. Despite the humble "I started this experiment for visual practice" claim, almost 100% of the photos are really outstanding. What an eye!
Photography buffs: make sure to look at the archives and make sure to hover your cursor over each pic, as you'll get detail on camera settings used to snap the pic. (which is where I learned about Lensebaby! Whee!)
Jakob Nielson posts this really good list of common design mistakes people are guilty of with their blogs. It's a good read if you blog or are thinking about doing so.
I am guilty of #3 (wow, I made it past 1,2), 4, 5, 6, 8, and 10.
#3 and #4 get fixed now. Self-discipline is the only issue here.
#5, #6, #10 are going to take more time. I do plan on doing a major site redesign, taking into account these issues, some useability/capability issues I have with blogger, and (if it fits my needs) moving to one of MS's blog services ('cause dogfooding's important!).
#8 (mixing topics) I'm in violation of, but wrestling with. I'm hoping the right categorization will help, but I'll have to see what I can come up with in terms of interface that lets this be done in an intuitive way for readers. Maybe multiple blogs with a megafeed or "one blog to rule them all"?
#1,#2,#7, #9 are the only ones I passed on. 4/10. Not exactly a gold-star grade, now is it?
Here's to self-improvement!
Courtesy Alice.
This guy hacked his PSP and found a way to jam in an iTrip FM tuner/transmitter.
SW hacking is one thing. HW hacking is another thing. HW hackery on micro-small consumer devices is another thing altogether. I mean they didn't build that PSP will a lot of spare room in there for fitting things inside, let alone getting it all to work.
Anyhow, sweet. Plus his low-tech-look web page has another hi-tech hack ($12 night vision camera) and looks like a good place to keep on the faves list.
I've been laboring through We (heart) Katamari, the highly anticipated sequel to Katamari Damacy, and I have to say, I'm not really loving it.
I really wanted to like it. Really. I did.
The first game was such a lovely surprise. And so simple, and compelling, and new, and fresh.
The sequel is certainly more of the same. It adds some new twists as well. However, for some reason it's just not doing it for me like the first did.
Despite all the talk of it being more polished than the first (could it have NOT been?!), many parts feel very rushed or contrived. For example the "template" for level completion sequence with the King: "We think it feels (noun)-ish", etc.
Some of the interesting new bits (e.g. Sumo level) are interesting, but not FUN. Sumo level just felt akward and frustrating due to rolling a non-round object. The underwater level was pretty but frustratingly dampened.
Feels a little bit like the follow-ons to The Matrix. I went into the first movie not knowing AT ALL what to expect and was thrilled. Perhaps sequels, while good, just never live up to the expecations we place upon them. I suppose they occasionally do (HL2, Quake 2 and 3, Police Acadamy six - ok maybe not that last one).
On the plus side, Katamari's generating some great merchandise and fan art:
(photo courtesy Tim "lego my lego" Cherna)
Spielberg/EA game deal announcement.
"Spielberg will work directly with EA's development teams to offer his signature style of storytelling to the concept, design, story and artistic visualization of the new games"
Umm... The Dig... E.T.
Sorry. Couldn't resist. (**snicker**)
Jeez. I must be getting old. My back has just recovered from the tweaking I gave it, and now something else.
I was carrying Tom in my arms this morning out to the car, and tripped going down the stairs. I managed to partially break Tom's fall before clunking his head on the garage floor (some tears and screaming, but he's fine). However, I twisted my ankle pretty badly (some tears and screaming, but I'm not fine).
I thought I was OK, and walked on it for a few hours, but this afternoon came into the office to catch up on some stuff and it's growing increasingly swollen and painful. I'm hobbling around in full-on middle-aged-man mode.
Samsung is going to eat the world.
This month Fortune has a pretty good 75th anniversary edition out. I recommend picking it up.
ANyhow, in it there is a story on Samsung. If you are in the technology biz - and I mean anything consumer HW or SW related, you should fear them!
Back when I was at Intel, while most thought of AMD, Motorola, or IBM, or perhaps Sony, as the competition; there was a growing sense that Samsung was the real enemy long term.
Trick question: On the average Windows PC sold, who makes the most money? Most of you would answer Microsoft, Intel, or perhaps the OEM (Dell, HP, etc) that sold you the machine. Truth is, it's Samsung. They increasingly have the lion's share of the build of materials of the average PC. Even though they don't have huge MSS in any one market (biggest might be in memory, and even then they are no where near monopoly-like. But get 10-30% MSS in a bunch of different markets (memory, components, hard drives, monitors, etc, etc) and it starts to add up!
Most people own WAY more samsung product than they realize.
... you see running around doing errands on a saturday.
...not from me though.
Steve Lacey has a nice summary of an MSR research lecture from John Battelle, co-founder of Wired mag, over on his blog.
John was talking about his latest book, and thoughts on Google. A favorite quote, as quoted from a Google insider, was "We’re one bad PR event away from being viewed as Big Brother".
There are also some comments on the problems with the company's direction (or plurality thereof) and growth rate.
Anyhow, it's a good read.
And before anyone comments; I'm not an MS "google hater". I use some of their tools, including search, pretty regularly. I'm just a hobbyist student of organizational structure, growth, and transition, and I think they are, and will increasingly be, a good case study.
Chris has a good rant going over on his blog. Not good from the perspective that I agree with it. Just good in that he's worked up and rants make for entertaining reads.
I'm not going to defend the Xbox team or product. The way I see it, it's shipping in a few weeks and it'll speak for itself.
I will say this. I was over at that campus late this evening and there are a lot of people working real hard to make sure lots of people have a happy thanksgiving & xmas this year. Nuthin' wrong with that.
Umm... not sure if they are supposed to post this or not, but this site has Burke's "The Day The Universe Changed" in MP3 format, narrated by Burke himself, availble for download free.
If you are going to download it, buy a copy of the book anyway. It's got more detail than the three hours of MP3, and some money will get back to Burke.
Good for you, Nabisco! You wanted a to have an advergame developed!
Good for you, a throw-the-cracker/chip-into-the-box Golf-style game! Great idea! Who doesn't love golf? Who doesn't love snacks?
Umm... now perhaps we need a name? What shall we call it?
Hmmm.... Golf... holes! Chips... corn!
That's it!!!
Ladies and Gentlemen, let's play little CORNHOLE, shall we?
Click.
Good grief. What were they thinking?
Other advergames we may soon see:
Ford's "Back seat bingo"
Oscar Meyer's Whack-a-mole clone "weiner whacker"
Fedex's "Look at my package!"
Squirrel Peanut Butter's DDR knock-off "kick my nuts as fast and hard as you can!"
Found a *great* interview with James Burke from WNYU radio
Toward the bottom of the list located HERE. (Audio only)
The first few minutes are an interview with John Sexton, which is also a good read.
We gave away a "spindle" for a solar blanket cover for the pool today. It was old, came with the house, we're getting a safety cover, etc. Needed to go, we craigslisted it, and got a taker.
So the guy comes over, I help him take it apart, we're talking and he recognizes my Canadian accent. (2nd person to remark on it today - is it getting thicker?)
Anyhow, he states that he was in northern Alberta last week. I ask where. He says some inuit sounding town. I ask if he flew through Edmonton. He states he drove. I ask why (cause it's far).
Turns out they were hunting geese. Needed the truck to haul them all back, plus gear (which is like, ammo n' stuff).
I ask how many they shot.
"We killed 29 geese on the last day alone!" he proudly exclaims.
"Whoa. That's a lot of recreational carnage." I replied.
I was rather fond of my response. He didn't know quite what to make of it.
Then we talked about other stuff and he left.
At lunch today, James Burke came up in conversation.
For those of you that don't know him, he's a author/speaker/historian/etc/etc who is most famous for his Connections series of programs done back in the 70's, 80's and 90's. More detail on Burke here.
I freakin' LOVE Connections and continually wrestle with dishing out the $150/per for the 3 box sets.
Anyhow, after doing some searching, I found out that Burke's opening speech from the ACM97 conference is available online here. (the video starts at slide 2 or 3)
You have to click through the slides one at a time and click the video icon on the top right for each individually, but it's well worth it. He's very entertaining, and his comments are as pertinent today as they were then.
Go watch it now. It's good for your brain!
news.com had a good review of the 360 pull-back-the-curtain show that was given to some press.
You can read it here.
WHile it reads well, it expresses some opinion that I fear will be a very common theme through all the next-gen launches (yes, including nintendo's)
"The problem is that current-generation console games are already damned slick. Are these new ultra-ultra-impressive graphics really necessary?
It's true that looking at an arena filled with tens of thousands of fans--each of whom is rendered individually--sounds good. But does it make for a better game? I think the jury's still out on that. "
...
"Yet in the end, I came back once again to wondering if it's all really necessary. When it comes to enjoying a video game basketball experience, just how real does the sweat have to be?"
Not a statement wishing for peace, but rather a statement about the fact that I sold my combination SmashTV/Total Carnage Jamma arcade machine last night.
This was the first machine that I bought & converted (not custom plexi control panel I built. not too shabby!), so I was a bit sad to let it go, but the new house hasn't the room for it, and I rarely played it.
Had a good round of SmashTV before I sold it though!
...on the Internet.
Duh.
Specifically I'm talking about a lot of really cool customizable services and applications happening through a combination of technologies like Ajax combined with peer/friend/blogger matching and/or communication.
The result start with apps that are customizable by users (e.g. I use www.start.com as my homepage now), but quickly get to mor compelling areas like customizable search, peer-customized search, peer-matchmaking-and-adjusted-search, etc.
Check out:
for a couple interesting examples. (Thanks to Charles and Adam for pointers to the above).
I might just be getting more exposure to these things now, but maybe not. It feels like the rate at which these are popping up is snowballing, and that it's no longer the complexity of linking them together (thanks to the whole web services arena), but the idea of linking the right ones togehter in the right way.
Sandip, if you are reading, you need to go find Dean and give him a great big whopping "I told you so!" :-)
Back's still hurting, but at least I'm mobile and semi-functional now (though I have to be real careful about what chair/table combo I'm using to type at or it starts to hurt pretty bad).
Good news: MS has medicine cabinets that are fully loaded, so I get free ibuprofin.
Bad news: They are the generic kind that are round rather than "caplet" shaped, so they don't fit in the pez dispenser - which would be handy right now.
Grokking the Chinese gaming market is hard, but the more I learn, the more I'm astounded by the potential.
There is a reality that lies somewhere between the opinions that range from "X hundred million online gamers by Y months from now" optimism to "that's not right it's way small and no one has any money over there" pessimism. Even if that reality is only a fraction of the way along that scale, it's going to change the industry in profound ways.
It's very exciting, but now my head hurts as well as my back (which is recovering slowly).
I got an email from Sitemeter with data about my blog's traffic, which has been up from normal lately.
Curious, I went to site meter (see link on lower right of this page) and looked at some of the data. It's always interesting to see who's reading, where they were referred from, etc.
Anyway, the increase in traffic is mainly due to people googling for the location of where Playboy is showing up at McGill to do their photoshoot, which I blogged about a few weeks back.
Sigh. And I thought maybe I'd said something interesting.
Um, guys? If you live in Montreal, you are privvy to some of most inexpensive and, ahem, liberal strip clubs in all of north america. Take the hormones over there and get over it, would'ja?
...Is not a noise your back should make.
OW! OW! OW! OW!!!!
A combination of having been absent from the gym for a week and overdoing it because I'd been absent a week led to me doing something very, very bad to my back.
OW!
Good article on some of the issues surrounding search. Pretty big connondrum when you think about it.
(snip)
"So the threat is this. In a world where people believe a perfect search exists, that world may fail to seek out knowledge in other ways. Someone blogs something that’s factually incorrect. Search picks this up. There are no other references out there. Search is perfect, ergo, what’s wrong becomes right. No one bothers to actually follow up on the fact."
(//end snip)
Some people call me a skeptic because my parents taught me to question everything I read, see or hear. Well, I plan on teaching my kids the same thing.
