Here is a fun flash game that is hard to explain, but it’s kind of a puzzle on how to get the little red ball to get the treasure box at the end. Very entertaining.
This is why America scares me sometimes
In a recent poll it seems that 3 of 4 Bush supporters still thought that pre-War Iraq had WMD’s, despite all the well publicized evidence to the contrary. The article goes on to show a few more differences in opinion in the views of the supporters and the actual policies of Bush. Somehow, and I wish I knew how, they all buy into this view that Bush is good for our country.
You know, I voted for him in 2000. Why? Because I belived in what he said, he would unite the country, bring back respect for America in the world and generaly be someone who would be a moderate in a country of extremes. He had his chance after 9/11, I worried but was generally supportive when we went in and took on the Taliban and Al-Quida. What happened from there was an intense and sickening display of deception and misdirection for all of America. With the war in reguards to Iraq, Bush and his advisiors made the country divided in such a way as to make you feel that if you didn’t support the unprovoked and unnessicary war on Iraq you were un-patriotic. Now in a country that was riding a wave of patriotism after 9/11, I have to give it to him that he played his cards well, giving him support with the most flimsy reasons, and complete lack of evidence.
In retrospect, I’m unhappy that I voted for Bush, who has divided, sperated and isolated me from other Americans, America from the world (and yes I know Poland supports us), and the entire politial system. I see him as dishonest, or maybe not even that, but so focused on creating his own reality, where he is never wrong, and that scares me. I want a leader who is willing to say, “After recieving more information, I discovered that we were wrong, sorry,” not, “I would have gone in anyways and taken out Saddam.” What does this show us? That Bush wanted to change the view of America in the World forever. Thanks, glad you asked me if I wanted to go along with it. I know there are Americans out there who say, “who cares what the world thinks of us?” Good question, easy answer. This is a world we live on. We cannot continue to be an island and piss off the rest of the world. Sorry, but everyone is conected, and if your neighbor isn’t fond of you, then don’t expect to be invited to the block party or have them help you out when you need to borrow something, or keep an eye out for you. Sorry but it’s common sense.
Look, I don’t claim to have all the answers, and even I wasn’t sold on Kerry until recently. Before that it was because I just knew I didn’t want Bush, now I believe that Kerry might just be the chance we need.
I know, I said no politics, but when your country is on the line and you can’t see four more years of what it’s turned into, you can’t sit silent. As an American I feel I must say something.
The Feasability of a Classic 2d Adventure
Grumpy Gamer waxes from experience (he’s one of the guy’s who did Monkey Island) on how economicaly feasable a classic style 2d adventure game would be today. To sum it up, if it did happen, and you tried to do it right, you are going to have a tough time of it. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible, just don’t be expecting them to be replacing Doom 14 or Half Life 4 anytime soon.
Neal Stephenson Interview
Over on slashdot, they have an new interview with Neal Stephenson, where the questions were the highest moderated from a pool of questions. It’s a good read, and interesting. Check it out.
More Links – Too much good stuff!
Since I really havn’t had time to write anything, here’s a few links that got me thinking or “other” today.
– It’s time for the second year of Child’s Play. It’s a chairity started by a couple of gamers who happen to run a somewhat popular game website. It’s to show that people who play games are not mass murders waiting to happen, but people with good hearts.
– My friend Tom is beginning his own bloggish type thing called Further Thoughts. Not much there yet, but there will be in the future.
– In a scary move, William Shatner is releasing a new album. Why? Next up David Hasselhoff will be back on the German music scene.
Because I have been cursed with it
I must pass it on: Banana Phone. It won’t leave my head. It is killing me!
Busy – But links to make up for it!
So I havn’t been trying to negelect the site. Though life has been a busy mess it seems. Good things: Red Sox’s are in the ALCS, but are down 0-2 as of today (Thursday).
– William Gibson is back and blogging. For those who don’t know who he is, I posted about him a couple of months ago. He used to blog and stopped because it interfered with his writing process. Apparently he’s back at it though.
– Here we have a comparison of all of the changes Lucas made to the new versions of Star Wars on DVD. Some I’m happy with, but still I’ll never believe that Greedo shot first. Read the article for insite.
– Now this is good: supposed query letters from actuall scriptwriters looking to get their “idea” made. Priceless.
Craziest – A VidLit
Through more random wandering I found Craziest – A short story by Liz Dubelman. It’s a flash short story, narrated by the author. It’s an interesting way to tell a story, and I enjoyed it. It’s a Scrabble related story. (Gotta love Scrabble) But, it made me think, that the story worked very well told in this way with pictures that helped tell the story. Almost a cross between a comic and a written story it tells it and takes something good from both worlds and does it well. Anyways, it’s about 8 min long, but worth the watch. I’m going to have to watch more from this VidLit site and see what else they’ve done with the form.
Death of the Auteur?
I saw this posted over on slashdot. The author talks of how games today are made with so many hands that having one “auteur” behind the whole game can be misleading and that in looking for authorship for a modern game one must look past a quick name on the box.
I’d agree that with some games and some game houses there is more of a colaboative effort into how the game is made and how it eventually reaches the market. With companies like Valve and Blizzard, we recognize the combined efforts of the staff to reach that goal, without having an actuall producer or author to credit the success of the title. This lessens the effect of an author as an artist, but then in a way with a game house like the above you can claim that the game house as a collective has the right to be the “auteur”.
He asks some great questions at the end:
Are there really different types of authorship with contemporary videogames? How should we categorize, if we should? What do we need to know to talk about authors (or auteurs)?
How do we distinguish the true vision behind a game and really whether or not there really is a singular vision anymore that brings a project to fruition. I think there are still a few people out there who are capable to do so, and there are probably more that no one has ever heard of behind the developer logos. You’ll hear endlessly about Hideo Kojima, Peter Molyneux, Sid Meier and Shigeru Miyamoto. About their vision for the games that they’ve made. In some cases it just ended up being their name on the box to sell the product.
I don’t see much changing though. There will be personalities who control and guide their vision to completion and there will be those who will guide a collaboative team to a stunning vision as well. It means though that through this new game journalisim we’ll have to not count on literary models to construct how we talk about games, but in the end create a new way to talk about them. It’s coming, and I’m looking forward to reading it.
Random Links – Again!
– A history of Mario Sprites, from his Donkey Kong roots to his more ugly pixelated recent Mario vs. Donkey Kong game. Some good commentary, but just fun to see all the different versions of our favorite plumber.
– SpaceShipOne made it up and back safely. This is great to watch. Their next flight is scheduled for October 4th and then the X-Prize will be theirs. Fun part is, a friend of mine works for Dynon Avionics, who has some of their systems in the SpaceShipOne.
– Here’s an excellent guide to where trojans and malware hide on you system. Pretty much I’m going to check my system when I get the chance. AdAware on gets so much of the junk.
– From RandomURL, comes this link to a electoral vote predictor based upon how the polls are in the different states. I see this changing as the debates go on, but time will tell. Breaking my own rule on not talking about politics, when is middle America going to realize that our president lied to them so he could go to war and change American foriegn policy and the world view of us forever? On another note, this guy makes arguments against the electoral college. He’s got some points, but then everyone has their arguments.
