-
"I am not naive and I am not a fool. I realize that gamification is the easy answer for deploying a perversion of games as a mod marketing miracle. I realize that using games earnestly would mean changing the very operation of most businesses. For those whose goal is to clock out at 5pm having matched the strategy and performance of your competitors, I understand that mediocrity's lips are seductive because they are willing. For the rest, those of you who would consider that games can offer something different and greater than an affirmation of existing corporate practices, the business world has another name for you: they call you "leaders."" Ian's whole article is great, and the comment thread is eye-opening.
-
"Something terrible has happened in our city (and may yet continue to happen). It's damnable, deplorable, heartbreaking. But it is also extraordinary, unusual, bizarre. Slamming the door on it without studying and understanding it is a dangerous and short-term tactic. Allowing yourself to feel nothing but anger, and doing nothing but lashing out … isn't that a little mindless? It would be nice, and useful, if we could ask London "why" without already having an answer in mind." Excellent, sober, cautious writing from Will Wiles.
-
"In this volume, people of diverse backgrounds — tabletop game designers, digital game designers, and game studies academics — talk about tabletop games, game culture, and the intersection of games with learning, theater, and other forms. Some have chosen to write about their design process, others about games they admire, others about the culture of tabletop games and their fans. The results are various and individual, but all cast some light on what is a multivarious and fascinating set of game styles."
-
Lovely little round-up of games about architecture and the urban environment from Kars.
Evo 2011: Moments
09 August 2011
Via GameSetWatch comes this marvellous compilation of “Moments” from Evo 2011.
It’s a really nice film. It’s not a compilation of players’ faces, or screen-capture, but primarily of the audience. And it reminds me why I love fighters so much: not just for the competition inherent in the game, but the community. Not a capital-c Community, either – but the community that springs up around every screen, every cab, every website, where you can’t stop talking to other players about what you’re seeing.
Just look at the crowd. Most of them will have entered the tournament and been knocked out, and yet they’re still there for the real show – watching the best players in the world waggle sticks and stab buttons. There’s been some incredible play at this year’s Evo, and it’s lovely to see someone concentrate on the incredible atmosphere to back it up.
Just look at that crowd.
-
"She said she felt relaxed when she returned from the tough evacuation center life; Paro was a big help in making her feel that way. By chatting with Paro and stroking its soft fur, the residents were helped to relax and their stress was reduced. It is an unbearable moment for the residents when they are waiting for Paro to be charged (the high-end gadget can go only one and half hours with its internal battery)." Some days, I would like a Paro very badly.
-
Cracking analysis from Soren Johnson on Free-to-Play, how it shapes game design for both good and ill, and the opportunities it opens in its wake.
-
"To keep up with trends, we've developed some iPhone stencils and sketchsheets that'll make the lo-fi stage of development a lot quicker." Passable iOS wireframe templates – but at least they're wireframey, rather than irritating pixel-perfect stencils that are all-too-easy to come by.
-
"You also know about the Wait. The Wait is Ahab’s white whale; it is America at Ellis Island; it is the night sky to the Greeks. The Wait is a disgusting amalgam of dreams, memories, hopes, desires, and expectations. In fact, barring all else, this may be the only thing that you know about Duke Nukem." A lovely piece of nostalgia – and review-system-breaking-analysis – from Jamin.
-
"It's not enough to hope that games might be redeemed as fine art or to be played by people of all ages and backgrounds. Instead, video games' cultural future depends on a rich, diverse, magical ecosystem of weird games of all shapes, sizes, and purposes helping multitudes of people pursue a variety of goals and passions. It's not that games need to "rise to the level" of books and films and the like, but that they need to spread like those media into all the nooks and crannies of human activity. The more deliberately creators populate such an ecosystem, the harder it will become for games to become pawns in the debates of others."
-
"The Simplest Screen Recording App For Your Mac. Ever." Looks it. I'm fed up of wrangling things like iShowU, so I might investigate this.
The Setup
06 August 2011
A while back, I was interviewed for The Setup, and that interview is now up on the site. In it, I talk about what I use to get stuff (vaguely) done. Almost none of it will be surprising if you know me and what I do, but worth linking to nontheless.
-
Don't forget to enable XSendFile for the Vhost in question. Like I did, and wondered why 0b files were coming down all the time.
-
"…let’s be clear that it is a phenomena to design for, and with. It’s something we will invent, within the frame of the cultural and technical pressures that force design to evolve.
That was the message I was trying to get across at Glug: we’re the ones making the robots, shaping their senses, and the objects and environments they relate to.
Hence we make a robot-readable world."
Solid Jonesgold. Very true, and something that's been in the back of my mind – like many others – for a while now.
-
"Seven hot air balloons, each with speakers attached, took off at dawn and flew across the capital. Each balloon plays a different element of a musical score, together creating an expansive audio landscape." Marvellous.
-
"It was supposed to be a £12,000 art project in which a helium-filled sculpture of a desert island floated eerily above the heads of spaced-out festival-goers. It has become instead a £12,000 art project in which a helium-filled sculpture of a desert island floats somewhere through the troposphere without anybody actually seeing it, or even knowing where it is." Awesome but sad all at once; and yet, expensive or not, it feels like a genuinely valid affordance of the art. Oh well.
-
"the footage gopro cameras produce is fantastic and i’ve seen some crazy stuff filmed with a gopro, but i think i found it’s achilles heel – my skateboard." The camera may be dead, but the footage is ace.
-
"Children will turn anything into a toy, any toy into a game and any game into a story. Adults do just the same thing, they just don’t do the noises. At least not when anyone’s looking." Yes. (Also: Sorrell is blogging. This is good.)
-
"Artist Rodrigo Derteano's autonomous robot plows the desert ground to uncover its underlying, lighter color, using a technique similar to the one of the Nazca lines, the gigantic and enigmatic geoglyphs traced between 400 and 650 AD in the desert in southern Peru. Guided by its sensors, the robot quietly traced the founding lines of a new city that looks like a collage of existing cities from Latin America." Oh gosh this is awesome.