• I swear, just go and read this right now; it might look like it's about games, but really, it's about space, and memory, and Memory Palaces, and wrapped around a retrospective of a marvellous game, and a little bit about how games make us who we are, in ways their creators might never have imagined.
    (tags: games ultimaunderworld ultima memory memoryplaces marvellous writing )
  • "We already know the decapitated Statue of Liberty in Deus Ex can tell a story; perhaps I want to know if a building can tell me a poem.

    In that vein, "Butte, Montana. 1973" is a game where you dig around in a box of dirt."

    This is marvellous; thoughtful, interesting, perhaps not entirely successful, but the trick of the rain at the end is a very, very nice touch.

    (tags: games mining physical tabletop commentary )
  • "At this moment of awards-giving and back-patting, however, we can all agree to love movies again, for a little while, because we're living within a mirage that exists for only about six or eight weeks around the end of each year. Right now, we can argue that any system that allows David Fincher to plumb the invention of Facebook and the Coen brothers to visit the old West, that lets us spend the holidays gorging on new work by Darren Aronofsky and David O. Russell, has got to mean that American filmmaking is in reasonably good health. But the truth is that we'll be back to summer—which seems to come sooner every year—in a heartbeat. And it's hard to hold out much hope when you hear the words that one studio executive, who could have been speaking for all her kin, is ready to chisel onto Hollywood's tombstone: "We don't tell stories anymore."" This is good, and sad.
    (tags: movies films hollywood sequels creativity risk )
  • "If you’re like us, your knowledge is spread across several places: Gmail, Google Docs, Basecamp, and more. Redwood makes it easy to search across these sources, right from your desktop." Clever.
    (tags: osx search basecamp gmail utilities )