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  • Near Future Laboratory » Blog Archive » Autonomous Game Controllers
    "in the meantime, I decided to do an absolutely crucial bit of game science. Something that I am entirely sure is mulled over constantly, but never properly investigated. The question is but stated thusly: how long would it take the Little Prince to roll up an entire room based on a random path algorithm?" Julian is having fun.
    (tags: games hardware play video electronics katamari autonomy )
  • Abyss & Apex : Fourth Quarter 2007: Wikihistory
    "Take it easy on the kid, SilverFox316; everybody kills Hitler on their first trip. I did. It always gets fixed within a few minutes, what's the harm?"
    (tags: writing history fiction sf timetravel )
  • Don’t worry, it won’t hurt you. « Groping The Elephant
    "For all the talk of immersion and realism it seems gamers still want games that provide for them, that make them the centre of the action, the pivotal agent in the events of the world, the nexus around which everything is focused." And this is one of the big conflicts within games: you have to make the player feel wanted whilst they're playing the game, make them feel the centre of attention, because without them the game is nothing. But at the same time: can you still tell stories that aren't about them? I expand a little in the comment on the blogpost proper.
    (tags: games play narrative choice farcry2 attention fallout3 focus selfcentered )
  • teehan+lax » Blog Archive » iPhone GUI PSD
    "Over the past few months we’ve had to create a few iPhone mock ups for presentations… Since we know we’ll be doing more of this, we created our own Photoshop file that has a fairly comprehensive library of assets – all fully editable." Could be useful.
    (tags: design iphone wireframe interaction mockup photoshop psd )
  • Living Epic: Video Games in the Ancient World: Makin' <em>kleos</em>, makin' fanboys
    "That is, the activity of making kleos, as a bard or as a player, is about forming an affinity group—people who think the game is a cool game, who want to talk about it, who would go to the mat for it. It’s about making fanboys. Odysseus is going to turn the Phaeacians into Odysseus fanboys, just as the bard of Odyssey 9 is going to turn his audience into fanboys of the Odyssey, just as he the bard is already such a fanboy."
    (tags: games storytelling stories epic homer fans kleos fandom classics )
  • cityofsound: Cables
    "Either way, I love reading these cables. The language is crafted so perfectly, despite the constraints. They’re caught between poetry and machinery." Yes. And what a different game it was then; lots to like in this taut post from Dan Hill.
    (tags: broadcast media sport commentary compression cricket condensation cables telegram bandwidth )
  • House of Bendie
    "Welcome to House of Bendie – a UK clothing line that takes classic, British suiting fabrics and creates unsuit-like clothes for men and women. We specialise in bespoke hoodies: hand-made, made-to-measure, hooded jackets crafted from exquisite suit materials." Oh, lovely.
    (tags: uk clothing tailoring hoodie clothes )
  • UGC its rude, its wrong and it misses the point « Derivadow.com
    "Generated" certainly is the wrong word.
    (tags: socialsoftware ugc crowdsourcing web20 )
  • Tate Modern| Current Exhibitions | Cildo Meireles
    Jaw-droppling good. More on this soon, but in a nutshell: you have about a week, and it's incredible. Do not ignore the queues inside it, either: they are all for excellent things.
    (tags: art london exhibition amazing cildomeireles tatemodern )
  • The Brainy Gamer: "I'm With the Band" – a short play
    "My crystal ball tells me you will hear music – great classic rock tunes – and you will believe, truly believe, that you are playing that music on your toy guitar. And you will feel, truly feel, that you are cool. A hero of the guitar." Lovely.
    (tags: games music play writing rockband guitarhero michaelabbott )
  • Chris Heathcote: anti-mega: now, more than ever
    "It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties."
    (tags: science technology security history futurism future prescience )
  • programming: like pulling teeth (tecznotes)
    "XP is adapted to a context where motivation is expensive and change is cheap. Interaction design (at least how Cooper explains it) is adapted to a context where motivation is cheap and change is expensive. It should be obvious that contexts of both kinds can exist in the world: there are situations where it's easy to return to previous decisions and modify them (software, for one), and there are other situations where it's not (e.g. buildings, dams)."
    (tags: design programming xp kentbeck alancooper cost )
  • Valve: Left 4 Dead's Survivors Are Now… Twittering
    Kotaku picked up on the L4D Twitterbots I wrote. Needless to say, the discussion thread descended into general Valve-baiting.
    (tags: games kotaku twitter blogs meta left4dead self )
  • User-Generated, Machine-Mediated Content « Save the Robot – Chris Dahlen
    "So why don’t we aim for a new tier – something that takes a chunk out of the 90, to lead it closer to the 9 and the 1? Why not give users a chance to enter something personal and creative, but let the system mediate, moderate and filter it into something useful?" Yes. The 90-9-1 pyramid is actually a very unhelpful metaphor, IMHO, and trying to explore and encourage creativity along a sliding scale rather than an absolute is important.
    (tags: games play creation creativity making ugc ughmeck chrisdahlen )
  • Mapping the Brainysphere: 29 blogs switched-on gamers should read « Subject Navigator
    Lots of good stuff in here, and, indeed, most of the blogs I started following this year. Somewhat flattered to have snuck in myself. It's a great starting point if you're interested in the games-crit-o-sphere, and nice that representative posts have been pulled out from each blog.
    (tags: games criticism blogging blogs )
  • Arduino Ethernet and Pachube: remote sensors & web-control | pachube.community
    "These sketches should make Arduino-based web-controlled home automation, and remote-responsive spaces a lot easier. The advantage of working with an ethernet shield is that you no longer need to tether the Arduino to a computer in order to access Pachube and other network services!" Some useful examples, to be returned to.
    (tags: programming development electronics arduino pachube )
  • Out of your control. « Groping The Elephant
    "In one moment the game had broken the tacit agreement between us. It had failed to respect my character decisions, it had made a pretense of allowing me to define whether Faith violent or not only to pull the rug away at the vital moment and strip all control from me. It lied. Any actions I might have taken to avoid combat up to then were for nothing. It had failed to show me respect so had lost mine." Breaking the unwritten contract with the player is definitely a bad thing, and I didn't notice this – but only because I'd not been aiming for the "no kills" achievement.
    (tags: games choice contracts freedom mirrorsedge pacifism )
  • YouTube – Japanese PS3 Bioshock ad
    Japanese Bioshock commercial. Nifty: no in-game footage, but there's something that feels like it overlaps right.
    (tags: games advertising bioshock japan )
  • Jan Chipchase – Future Perfect: Contactless Confusion
    "…as the cards become more prevalent, and the features of one card start to trump another people end up carrying multiple cards with overlapping functions. The only way for the user to know which card to use? Gosh – to remove the card from the wallet. Convenience indeed."
    (tags: interaction design ubicomp infrastructure rfid )
  • What Would Don Draper Do?
    Don turns to writing a self-help column. The style is pretty much spot on.
    (tags: parody pastiche tv madmen advice tumblr selfhelp )
  • Foodie at Fifteen (now 16): Per Se (2)
    "It was September 29th; exactly two months from the Saturday of Thanksgiving break and one of the few times I would be able to make the trek up to New York to dine at Per Se. I would have to call to make the reservation at Per Se at exactly 10 A.M today if I had any hope of getting that Saturday reservation. The only problem? I had school." Some lovely writing from a young foodie on securing a reservation at Per Se, and what happened when he went. And, of course, what he ate.
    (tags: writing food cooking blogs perse newyork thomaskeller )
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