"All true Londoners have a south London past. There they experienced their first flat, their first date, their first taste of city life, with nothing too exotic. They dallied in Clapham, flirted with Dulwich, tested their mortgage muscle on Stockwell. (I lived awhile in Upper Norwood.) South London is the kind of place, as was said of George Bush, that “reminds every woman of her first husband”." I enjoyed a lot of this article by Simon Jenkins, although he goes *way* too far when he mentions Cyprus and Yugoslavia…
Much as I respect their output, I do find Tale Of Tales attitude towards games is increasingly… asshole-ish, frankly. Their behaviour (reported) at Art History Of Games only makes them seem like trolls; I fear their ultimate end will be obscurity, more than anything else. Which is a shame, because there really is value in what they're doing. There's just no value in trolling anybody else.
Ooh, this is interesting: reviews of screenplays circulating around Hollywood; well-written, incisive thoughts on the writing process, and some great links (from time to time).
"Glitch is a massively-multiplayer game, playable in the browser and built in the spirit of the web. It is currently in development and will launch late in 2010. Private alpha is beginning shortly and a public beta period will begin this summer." Exciting!
Daniel Terdiman interviews Stewart Butterfield and Cal on Glitch, which is what Tiny Speck are making. Good interview, and worth noting just how often they threw things out.
The Effras are a rather lovely band from the Norwood area, and they sing rather lovely songs about South London. Actually, they sing songs about lots of things, but being named for the river that links Norwood to the Thames. They’re also friends of mine, and when it turned out they were playing the Plough, just down the road, as part of the Dulwich Festival, I thought I’d swing by; needless to say, I took my camera.
Rather pleased with these. There was, unsurprisingly, almost no light – nothing dedicated, given it was just an area in a bar – so I was pushing the sensor to its limits. On the plus side, that did mean I was nice and close to the band.
And: what a set they put on! Lovely songs, and great performers; if they’re passing by your area, do check them out.
"A year with a single Leica and a single lens, looking at light and ignoring color, will teach you as much about actually seeing photographs as three years in any photo school, and as much as ten or fifteen years (or more) of mucking about buying and selling and shopping for gear like the average hobbyist." This is not a bad point.
"High-resolution renders of gameplay from Shadow of the Colossus, including earlier versions of the game (where the colossi had differently-shaped eyes, as one example). Most of the screenshots are at or around 2048×1526 resolution - perfect for making wallpapers of any size." Ooooh.
"...what I'm hearing is the actual drum line recorded by the song's drummer, and I'm triggering those sounds by playing notes within the designated timing window. And that timing window, even on Expert, is quite a bit more generous than real life. It's the difference between truly playing a beat and merely invoking a beat. When I play Rock Band, though, that difference is camouflaged so subtlely and so well that I never even notice. That's a beautiful bit of design, isn't it?" Yes, it is. Bill Harris on the magical quantize that you forget exists in Harmonix' games. This, incidentally, is something I'm convinced Neversoft never got right, especially in the horrendous Guitar Hero 3.
"Introducing the Dice-O-Matic mark II, now generating the dice rolls on GamesByEmail.com. It is a 7 foot tall, 104 pound, dice-eating monster, capable of generating 1.3 million rolls a day." They roll real dice. They roll lots, and lots, of real dice.
"This is my dedication to the creative team behind Pixar's movie The Incredibles. I loved the depth of the world, the buildings, the gadgets and most of all I loved the chairs. Enjoy!" Collecting things is important. This is lovely.
"He's going to like that album, and then he's going to ask you about The Police, and he's going to want to know why they aren't together anymore. How are you going to explain what happened to Sting? You know, when he started singing about turtles and ponies and became an obsessive Beanie Baby collector. What are you going to say?" Bill doesn't want to have to explain Sting to Eli.
"To justify such an investment in time, a game would not only have to match the content of the course, but provide a learning experience that couldn't be accomplished through reading, writing and class discussion." Todd Bryant on how he integrated playing games into his teaching programmes; some nice ideas in here, notably using MMOs for language tuition, and some commentary on the suitability of various titles for this sort of thing.
"Maybe [games publishers] think there could never be enough competition, excitement, betrayal, surprise, defeat, skull-daggery, and general griefer-worthy assholeishness in a game without direct conflict. But the last year’s worth of news out of Wall Street tells a different story. It’s a tale of a system corrupted from the inside by the scheming, cheating, gaming of a few powerful and greedy individuals. If this is not prime material for a videogame, I don’t know what is."
Jolly good interview with Tim Sweeney, with lots on ZZT (hurrah!), and, I think most interestingly lots of on building games around editors and tools - from ZZT through Unreal to the present day. I like his acknowledgments of his shortcomings as a progammer - but perhaps also his shrewdness as a manager.
"You've been meaning to do it for over a decade. Now join endurance bibliophiles from around the web as we tackle and comment upon David Foster Wallace's masterwork, June 21st to September 22nd. A thousand pages1 ÷ 93 days = 75 pages a week. No sweat." Hmn. Maybe. I might want to read something else, though... but could be fun!
"They preserve them as best they can, perhaps without even knowing that’s what they’re doing, but in the understanding that no archives may be kept, no histories written, and that what sustains their digital lives is the lived-out, written-down, spoken word." Reminds me of the "what five pages would you print out" conundrum, and the end of Fahrenheit 451; walking the woods, chanting entries from Encyclopedia Dramatica
Well Played is now out, and can be read online and purchased from Lulu. It's exactly the sort of thing I've wanted for a while - a reader for videogames, and for the actual experiential side of them - and it's got some great authors contributing pieces on a host of games. Worth your time, for sure.
"Another word for "pacing" is "storytelling". We never really tell stories to players; we just put them in games. Then players tell our stories to themselves." Interesting analysis of pacing in games, and what the demands games make on pace are. And, of course, that quotation.
"Jarate is neither affiliated with, nor a substitute for, Karate." The Sniper's new weapon: a jar of piss. The way this update has unfolded has, basically, been totally awesome.
"Video game designer Robin Hunicke, noticeable at any gaming event for having the reddest hair of anyone in attendance, is trading her big-company background for ThatGameCompany, a sign that the small studio behind Flow and Flower is growing its ranks." Oh. That *is* interesting.
"The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation announced today that The LEGO Group is now the exclusive licensed manufacturer of Frank Lloyd Wright Collection® LEGO Architecture sets." Hmn. Not sure what the market for these is, beyond curios; they're not particularly high-resolution, for starters.
"Professional photographic & art printing with great value? theprintspace delivers. At the printspace we understand what professional quality means, and we also offer 48 hour turnaround time & guaranteed satisfaction." As recommended to me by Jon.
"I gave a presentation on Treetop last night at lrug - seemed to go down well. There aren’t many examples of treetop grammars I’ve seen, so it might be useful if you find the main site’s documentation a bit impeneterable." Roland drops some Treetop science, and it looks very useful. Good stuff!
"...to prove I could, I made a small desktop application. It’s called Clarke. It’s really not very exciting — don’t get your hopes up. It’s just a toolbar thing that sits there, quietly, using Skyhook’s API to triangulate your location from nearby wifi points, pushing it to Fire Eagle. Yes, it’s YAFEU (Yet Another Fire Eagle Updater)." Tom makes Proper Software. He is smart.
Joel Johnson rounds on Wired for the gulf between their online and printed formats; the comments thread turns into a much more rational, and reasonable, discussion from many Wired staff, past and present.
"Boxer plays MS-DOS games on your Mac. It’s based on the robust DOSBox emulator, with a lot of magic sprinkled on top. Run DOS programs from Finder. Wrap your games into tidy packages that launch like Mac apps. Painlessly install games from CD—then bundle the CD with your game so you don't even need it in the drive."
"The lesson to be learned here is that when something screws with your careful plans, you take control of that thing, warp it to your every demand, and channel it into a concentrated stream of Awesome. That is how you do PR." Pretty much. Valve have handled this brilliantly - the achievement they awarded themselves being the icing on the cake - and not only have they been on-brand for a savvy, internet-enabled company, they've also been spot on-brand for TF2.
"...this is a good time to consider zzt’s library - not because it’s changing, but because it’s probably complete. the long-running game archive z2 just declared zzt dead, and why not - it’s served its purpose: allowing people who aren’t programmers or digital artists an avenue to game creation before game maker or construct existed. now they do." ZZT must have been one of the first games I played, and I poked around its level editor. This retrospective both fascinates and arouses nostalgia in equal measures.
