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"The easiest hustle for tips is flattery and a smile."
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"This is a VT220 serial console (circa 1983) set up as a terminal for my Mac Pro (circa 2010), a nerdy dream I’ve had for a long time that I finally made a reality yesterday." Beautiful. Just look at it!
Police Business
12 August 2011
“‘Police business’, he said almost gently, ‘is a hell of a problem. It’s a good deal like politics. It asks for the highest type of men, and there’s nothing in it to attract the highest type of men. So we have to work with what we get – and we get things like this.'”
Raymond Chandler, The Lady In The Lake
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Fascinating article on the lengths one has to go to to get perfectly accurate hardware emulation. It's not enough to get stuff to run; you have to get it to run right, and in the era this hardware comes from, that means it needs to take into account the weirdness of hardware.
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"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.
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"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.
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"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."
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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.
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"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.
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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.
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"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.
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"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.
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"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."
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"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.