Links & notes for this month

• • Ian Bogost - Cow Clicker
    "In cinema and theater, we often hear about method acting, a technique by which actors try to create the situations, emotions, and thoughts of their characters in themselves in order to better portray them. In creating Cow Clicker, I rather felt that I was partaking of method design, embracing the spirit and values and ideals of the social game developer as I toed the lines between theory, satire, and earnestness." Bogost calls it Method Design; I've been describing it as "systemic satire" - the making of satirical mechanics.
    (tags: games criticism mechanics satire socialgames facebook ianbogost cowclicker )
  • Cheapass Games - Nothing Beats Rock
    "The secret to winning this game is rolling "Rock." If you can continue to roll "Rock", you're going to win eventually, because Nothing Beats Rock."
    (tags: satire games nothingbeatsrock )
  • GDC Vault - Train (or How I Dumped Electricity and Learned to Love Design)
    Brenda Brathwaite is awesome. This is brilliant. You should watch it. (This is also in tune with so many things I'm banging on about at the moment).
    (tags: games design video brendabrathwaite gdc10 )
  • Spy Party Hard: Hands On With Spy Party | Rock, Paper, Shotgun
    Spy Part is sounding - and looking - increasingly good. Can't wait.
    (tags: games chrishecker spyparty )
• • Aaron Reed - Experiment 1 — 1 of 1
    "The story description is "Giving objects in a story world symbolic weight has often been done by hand, but rarely procedurally. Here's one method for doing so."." This is stunning.
    (tags: inform7 metaphor symbolism literateprogramming )
  • >TILT AT WINDMILLS: Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7: Coming August 2010
    "The book assumes no prior knowledge of programming, but also doesn't treat I7 like a regular programming language: loops, for instance, are barely mentioned. In fact, Thinking in Inform 7 might have been a good title." This sounds great.
    (tags: if interactivefiction books programming inform7 )
  • CABINET // A Timeline of Timelines
    Brilliant.
    (tags: history historiography timeline culture science )
  • Go behind the scenes with Red Dead Redemption's accompanists | Joystiq
    Nice, if somewhat DVD-extra-y, video on the RDR soundtrack. The most interesting footage is of the recording sessions and the musicians. It's a shame we're still at layering everything at same tempo/key, when it comes to interactive scores; I miss iMuse. But otherwise: great stuff.
    (tags: music recording games reddeadredemption soundtrack )
• • Maps - Boing Boing
    "Videogames are systems, not themes, but dress a system in the right theme and you can catch the attention of someone who would not otherwise be interested. So it is for my father, who, in these awkwardly rendered moments, catches a glimpse of what I'd been seeing my entire childhood." Lovely, lovely piece of writing from Simon.
    (tags: simonparkin writing videogames games maps jrpgs )
  • venomous porridge - “MOM! BETHANY WON’T LET ME PLAY DOODLE JUMP!” ...
    Fanfic, if you like, about App Store products. Lovely.
    (tags: doodlejump appstore writing fiction )
• • The Burger Lab: The Ins-n-Outs of an In-N-Out Double-Double, Animal-Style | A Hamburger Today
    Oh my.
    (tags: food burgers innout animalstyle )
• • Last Kodachrome roll processed in Parsons | Business News for Wichita Kansas | Local Journal of Wichita Business News and Kansas Business News | Wichita Eagle
    "National Geographic has closely documented the journey of the final roll of Kodachrome manufactured, down to its being processed. Dwayne's is only photo lab left in the world to handle Kodachrome processing, so National Geographic Television producer Yvonne Russo and National Geographic magazine senior video producer Hans Weise found themselves in Parsons Monday, along with McCurry, with the final roll of the iconic film of the 20th century." Steve McCurry shot the final roll of Kodachrome in the world.
    (tags: film slides kodachrome photography history )
  • Jeffrey Friedl's Blog » An Analysis of Lightroom JPEG Export Quality Settings
    Jeffrey does that hard work so you don't have to. I'm going to leave my slider set around 75, but it's still good to know what the hell is (vaguely) going on under the hood...
    (tags: lightroom photography compression jpeg analysis )
• • Daily Star: Simply The Best 7 Days A Week :: News :: Rockstar Games - Grand Theft Auto - An apology
    "We made no attempt to check the accuracy of the story before publication and did not contact Rockstar Games prior to publishing the story. We also did not question why a best selling and critically acclaimed fictional games series would choose to base one of their most popular games on this horrifying real crime event... It is now accepted that there were never any plans by Rockstar Games to publish such a game and that the story was false. We apologise for publishing the story using a mock-up of the game cover, our own comments on the matter and soliciting critical comments from a grieving family member. " The combination of "no attempt to check the accuracy" and "soliciting critical comments from a grieving family member" is really quite astonishing. Idiots.
    (tags: dailystar idiots definitelynotjournalism grandtheftrothbury )
  • The Top Idea in Your Mind
    "I suspect a lot of people aren't sure what's the top idea in their mind at any given time. I'm often mistaken about it. I tend to think it's the idea I'd want to be the top one, rather than the one that is. But it's easy to figure this out: just take a shower. What topic do your thoughts keep returning to? If it's not what you want to be thinking about, you may want to change something."
    (tags: paulgraham ideas creativity thinking )
• • Episode #8 - Modern Interactive Fiction - The Gameshelf
    A short film by Jeremy McIntosh about IF; covers some nice ground, and at ten minutes, is about the right length.
    (tags: if interactivefiction games video )
• • Cinema's Invisible Art | Online Only | Granta Magazine
    "Lethal Weapon. A metafictional masterpiece. Who knew? The postmodern flourishes proliferate throughout the script..." Lovely Granta piece on the prose styles of screenplays; the Shane Black example is great fun, though the Dan O'Bannon speaks to me most, perhaps.
    (tags: writing film screenwriting screenplays )
• • Moserware: Computing Your Skill
    Excellent, detailed article on how Microsoft calculate TrueSkill - an algorithm for matching you to players about in your skill level. This is what is used every time you hit "game with strangers" on an XBL title, basically. Fascinating, detailed, not too challenging if you take it slow/steady - and the implementation is on github...
    (tags: trueskill machinelearning programming games algorithms probability skill )
• • gameplaywright.net // story, games, together
    "The Bones gathers writing about fandom and family—about gamers, camaraderie, and memories— and ties them together where they meet: our dice. These are essays and anecdotes about the ways dice make us crazy, about the stakes we play for and the thrill we get from not knowing what the next roll will bring."
    (tags: books dice games play )