Links & notes for this month

• • Ragdoll Metaphysics: JG Ballard, Boredom, And The Violent Promise Of Videogames - Offworld
    "That is not to say that videogames need to be more sensationalist, more vulgar, or more crass, but that they need not fear being more transgressive, or more expressive, or more visceral. They need not to shy away from their darker depictions of our fantasies, or become embarrassed when people point out how they dwell on violence and excitement. This, the safe excursion to the gladiatorial arena, is what games do best." Rossignol on Ballard, and jolly good too.
    (tags: videogames jgballard writing offworld article ballard jimrossignol escapism banality violence )
• • ihobo: Ten Game Development Vices, Part One
    "In this piece, each of the departments involved in making a videogame are examined and accused of one particular vice. In making these assessments, the assumption behind each is that the purpose of the videogames industry is to make games that players want to play, and not to make the games that developers want to play." It is good, and I'm looking forward to the second part.
    (tags: development games industry criticism difficult casual mainstream budget )
  • GameSetWatch - Opinion: The Breadth Of Game Design
    "...as developers, we need to deal more honestly with the disparity between our reach and our grasp - which is to say, what we tell ourselves our games are about, versus what they are actually about. History will see this decade as the period when games struggled with their destiny in this way." 2K Marin's JP LeBreton with a smart, insightful take on the road ahead for games design, and the many positive steps being taken along it (and: a decent commentary on the "shooting people" issue).
    (tags: games design play mechanics progress literacy )
  • Skew, The Frontend Engineer's Misery @ Irrational Exuberance
    "With limited influence, unlimited hands in the pie, a low barrier to critique, and the perception of triviality, frontend engineers are the janitors of software development. Rather than cleaning up trash, the boulder they toil beneath is skew: the distance between team member's conceptions of a project." This really feels very familiar: it's the most under-appreciated art in the stack of software development, and the one that takes the brunt of the crap.
    (tags: engineering programming development frontend product software project management )
  • Dante’s Inferno Delayed for Tedious, Rigid Adaptation « Hardcasual
    "Best of all, for impatient gamers the developer plans to conceal load screens with a mini-game where players can connect a USB keyboard and write an undergraduate thesis on the illustrations of Gustave Dore." Seriously, this already sounds much better than the Redwood Shores version...
    (tags: ea games dantesinferno hardcasual humour )
  • www.Farbs.org - Quirky little games for your edification
    Farbs quit 2K Australia. This is his resignation note. It's fun, and not in any way mean.
    (tags: games resignation work job indie )
• • PLUSH ALL HU-MANS Red Robot Squishable
    "Produced in extremely limited quantities by the fair trade toy gurus at Squishable, this chubby little Red Robot wants to get close to your heart… so he can tear it out with love." Squee. I would quite like one.
    (tags: redrobot softtoy cute )
  • No homosexuality in Star Wars - BioWare
    "Even discussions of the ban are being locked. At the bottom of the thread "GLBT discrimination in forums?", community manager Sean Dahlberg wrote, "As I have stated before, these are terms that do not exist in Star Wars. Thread closed."" How depressing: can you really hetero-normalise an online, social, MMO? Makes me a bit angry, and I'd have thought BioWare would have been more sensitive around this. Is this Lucasarts turning the screws?
    (tags: homosexuality games online mmo starwars bioware oldrepublic discrimination )
  • Study: 80% of Players Remember Selves “Way Better” at Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 « Hardcasual
    "When their fond memories of these games are challenged, they become nearly catatonic. Really, most of these players were just mashing ‘fierce punch’ as hard as they could and occasionally pulling off a quarter-circle turn. Once they’re faced with online competition… Well, they may be in for a terrible shock.”
    (tags: hardcasual mvc2 beatemup games fighting nostalgia humour )
• • Codeigniter: Mixing segment-based URL with querystrings | Ask About PHP
    "So, is it possible to mix segments and querystring?" Sort of, maybe, seems to be the answer.
    (tags: codeigniter php routing url hack )
  • Rands In Repose: Keynote Kung-fu Two
    "The original Keynote Kung-fu article describes how to set up and use Keynote for the first time, but once you’ve done a couple of presentations, you’re going to want more." Rands drops some Keynote science, and I learn at least one new thing.
    (tags: presentation keynote software osx speaking tips )
  • YouTube - Experimental Game: Shadow Physics
    Even if it's got a long way to go, there's so much promise and potential here - and it's interesting to see how refined some of the puzzle ideas are. And: mind-bending in the way the best puzzle games are.
    (tags: shadowphysics games indie indiegames perspective lighting 3D 2d platform )
  • kewlchops: A new leaf.
    "I'm looking forward to working with new, clever people and getting my hands dirty again. I'm charged with leading the Open Library into fresh, fun territory; to enlist many hands to make "a page on the web for every book ever published" a great resource. I'm thrilled to be working with Brewster Kahle and his crack team in an important time for books on the web." What a perfect hire. Can't wait to see what George brings to it.
    (tags: georgeoates internetarchive books publishing openlibrary awesome )
  • BLDGBLOG: This Diseased Utopia: 10 Thoughts on Swine Flu and the City
    This is epic and brilliant and has so many jumping-off points I need to read it again, and again, and again.
    (tags: disease cities design health architecture bldgblog swineflu flu space )
  • BLDGBLOG: How the Other Half Writes: In Defense of Twitter
    "Now that suburban housewives in Missouri are letting their thoughts be known via Twitter, it's as if writing itself is thought to be under attack, invaded from all sides by the unwashed masses whose thoughts have not been sanctioned as Literature™. In many ways, I'm reminded of Truman Capote's infamous put-down of Jack Kerouac: "That's not writing, it's typing.""
    (tags: twitter writing bldgblog society people literature microblogging notetaking culture )
  • Bronze Age Fox - Impossible! info
    Pop band from Bristol, made good singles, got a deal, rather than touring recorded an album, album got shelved by label that had wanted them to tour, band broke up, album now sees light of day from SVC, for three quid. Phew!
    (tags: music brongeagefox publishing download album pop )
• • Honda Insight - Let It Shine on Vimeo
    Yes, it's advertising, but that's really, really, really clever. Nicely done.
    (tags: video marketing honda advertising unconventional surprising )
  • russell davies: blog all dog-eared pages: notes from walnut tree farm
    "The Whole Earth Catalogue, our bible as self-builders of our residences in the hippie-ish days of the 1970s, was subtitled ‘access to tools’. ‘With tools,’ ran the editorial preface, ‘you can do more or less anything.’" Lots of good quotations, including this, and also on fires.
    (tags: books culture tools nature outdoors rogerdeakin )
  • Cassini's continued mission - The Big Picture - Boston.com
    I've linked to a single photo, because it makes me think: what it must be, to be taking photographs for Science, millions of miles away via radiowaves, and to have them not only be useful, but to turn out as beautiful as this one. How wonderful to know that the universe is as beautiful as the world, and that even in the name of research, we can take such beautiful pictures.
    (tags: space cassini saturn astronomy nasa photography beauty bigpicture )
• • Dead pixel in Google Earth
    "82 x 82 cm burned square, the size of one pixel from an altitude of 1 km."
    (tags: art google internet mapping aerialphotography visual joke pixelation via:brandonnn )
  • Miegakure
    "Miegakure is a platform game where you explore the fourth dimension to solve puzzles. There is no trick; the game is entirely designed and programmed in 4D. Because humans can only see and move along three spatial dimensions, pressing a button allows to "swap" one regular dimension with the fourth, invisible dimension. Armed with this, the protagonist can see inside closed objects, walk through walls, move objects from one dimension to another, hide under 3D shadows of 4D objects, and more. " You read right. Four spatial dimensions. Now: how can I play it?
    (tags: games space hyperdimensional platform )
• • Nixon's Undelivered Moon Disaster Speech [1969]
    "For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind." Bill Safire's speech for Richard Nixon, on the event Armstrong and Aldrin were marooned. A glimpse of alternate history.
    (tags: history space speech rhetroic america alternatehistory )
  • Locked Door | Rock, Paper, Shotgun
    "I hate the way I’m expected to give up trying to open you when I see the words “this door has been locked from the other side” or “this door opens elsewhere”, as though they’re a command from God himself."
    (tags: games writing mechanics doors )
• • tiara.org » Blog Archive » Foursquare, Locative Media, and Prescriptive Social Software - Part One
    "Locative social media is especially interesting because it directly affects how people move through the city. It can be terrifically fun and useful for people who fit its prescribed social model." This kind of proscription (or encouragement) of behaviour is interesting, and I think there are a variety of ways to do it "sensibly". And: how did you expand the group of "people who fit its prescribed social model"? Small changes of behaviour, amongst larger groups, are much, much more interesting.
    (tags: social play games location place casual foursquare locative socialsoftware )
  • Maniacal Rage: Reading post
    "Apple is creating an ecosystem of the kind of customers I don’t want. With the ridiculous approval process leaving bugfixes to take over a week to show up, with prices being driven down to nothing by farting apps… it just feels hostile to me. While I have plenty of great customers who have been raving about the app, all it takes is one little issue and it all comes crashing down." Sad, really.
    (tags: iphone application development feedback customersatisfaction process apple )
  • First-Person Shouter » Chartcore Gamer
    It's the hip-hop-songs-as-charts meme, but about being a PC gamer. Moderate chuckles abound.
    (tags: games graphs infographics charts pc humour )
• • Pig in Boots: The world's only porker who is afraid of mud | Mail Online
    Contains photographs of a PIG in TINY WELLINGTON BOOTS.
    (tags: pig boots farming amazing )
  • Versus CluClu Land: Against my Better Judgement, I Discuss Citizen Kane and Maybe Art
    "The problem with all this is that we're asking the wrong question. The “are games art?” question is boring... The interesting question, to me, is what /kind/ of art games are. That is, we should be asking ourselves what kind of formal dynamics and pleasures are inherent in the medium, and be able to identify when these formal capacities are used well." Sensible, rationally thought out, and also a reminder as to /why/ Kane is used as a benchmark. "Command of formal capacities" is an important phrase.
    (tags: art videogames criticism games iroquoispliskin writing citizenkane )
  • pats_quinade: But there's no timer, see, and... okay, I'll stop.
    "Clearly we had not been invested enough in the narrative."
    (tags: games play children story narrative mechanics )
  • I Hate Woods t-shirt
    Francis has gained his own clothing line, and I need this shirt like a red wizard needs food.
    (tags: games apparel tshirt francis left4dead hatred valve awesome )
• • Wonderland: Commissioning for Attention: games, education and teens
    "I've always marvelled at the idea of a $25m game needing $35m of marketing. Doesn't that feel so wrong and weird? I'd make two $25m games, spend $8m on indies doing crazy new things, and have $2m left over for some nu-style publicity. Or better still, spend $60m across 60 indies full stop." Lots of good things in Alice's compainon to Matt's posts, but especially this; the constant shyness to 'spend less on more stuff' from the games "industry" always befuddles me.
    (tags: commissioning media channel4 games education marketing learning play alicetaylor )
  • hiimdaisy's entries tagged as "metal gear"
    Lots of comics neatly surmising the plots of various Metal Gears; "Let's Destroy The Shagohod" is pretty spot-on, start to finish, and full of Giant Spoilers, obviously.
    (tags: comics pastiche games metalgear metalgearsolid humour )
  • Cruise Elroy » The game that was a book
    "As I tried to unravel Braid’s interstitial text I realized that solving the puzzles and understanding the text required very similar approaches. Their concealed machinations and thematic ambiguities are teased out using the same mental processes, and are part of the same overarching search for meaning. In a way, I was “reading” everything in the game. It’s not the unification of narrative and gameplay that we’ve come to expect, but it’s a refreshing and effective one." Dan Bruno has an interesting perspective on Braid; not sure I agree with it entirely, but the feelings he describes are certainly familiar.
    (tags: games braid literature writing criticism exploration comprehension )
  • Architecting the unreal: the hubs and spokes of BioShock's Rapture - Offworld
    So I'm going to be writing the odd thing for Offworld from time to time, and this is my first post, on a nice post from Steve Gaynor about architecutre, and leading players through stories with architecture alone. More to come, pop-pickers.
    (tags: offworld games writing me bioshock architecture tomarmitage )