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  Underlinked: Digital moments that mattered

  http://www.patrickcooper.com/2008/11/underlinked-digital-mom...
  42 days ago in Patrick Cooper: Greetings from Evanston, Ill. · Authority: 10

  Underlinked: Digital moments that mattered The NYT Magazine's Screens issue this week is a great read in an un-NYT Magazine sort of way. You don't get links to a dozen Next pages when you click into any of the stories, and the best moments show up in disaerate form. Underlinked, I think, out of the copy has been Emily Gould's "Moments that Mattered," collecting people's favorite digital moments of this year. Example: "By the end of the campaign, I was seeing the Drudge siren in my sleep," Howard Wolfson says. David Byrne closes the piece in style, sorry to spoil the lesson: I’m on a music tour now, and I am told that almost every show we do gets posted later that same night or the next day — well, random bits of it. We can watch our progress on YouTube in shaky, fuzzy fragments. One poster apparently had very little memory on his camera or cellphone, because his posting was limited to a couple of seconds. Blink and you missed it. Why did he even post it? Why bother? The answer might be hinted at in the anthropological film: here is film, or video, as a kind of social glue — a network of shout outs, visual riffs and threads that sometimes seem like desperate calls for attention but are also, just as often, incredibly creative. It's the network, baby. But we only stay for the lesson after we come for the robots. Andy Samberg on the kind of robot he really wants: I saw a clip on the Internet of that Swiss dude, Yves Rossy, who made himself a jet pack and then flew it around like some kind of European awesome guy! If you haven’t seen it, just imagine if Iron Man and a Stealth bomber had a baby and decided to raise it in Switzerland to be a bald dude. The jet pack, much like the video phone, has always been on my childhood list of things I’ve been waiting for. And now, they’re both here. The future has arrived! Which raises the question: How long till I can get a decent robot? I don’t want any of those big white clunkers I’ve seen rolling around. I want a robot that I can really use. One that can entertain guests with political trivia and lend me money for late-night cab rides. Get it together, robot makers. (Do you know they're making a 3-D movie out of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs? With Samberg, Bill Hader, Anna Ferris, Mr. T, Jimmy Caan, Tracy Morgan, and Bruce Campbell? I want to be seeing it right now.) The NYT issue has another robot mention with Sims creator Wil Wright: "I’m a founder of the Stupid Fun Club, which does research involving robots. One of my favorites that we designed at the club is Moonbot [watch video], which vacillates between a flat robot and a somewhat flirtatious female. It’s interesting how much that changes the way people (especially men) relate to it." I have a friend who's becoming an expert on robot-human relationships, and they're really all she talks about these days. I think the Moonbot could be more exciting. I also like the Screens piece on screens. "We are becoming people of the screen. The fluid and fleeting symbols on a screen pull us away from the classical notions of monumental authors and authority. On the screen, the subjective again trumps the objective. The past is a rush of data streams cut and rearranged into a new mashup, while truth is something you assemble yourself on your own screen as you jump from link to link. We are now in the middle of a second Gutenberg shift — from book fluency to screen fluency, from literacy to visuality." To me, the essay wrongly backs this point with development slants — content creation, annotation and navigation. The population in those areas is important but too small to support claims to cultural visuality. What seems to matter more now is how the more passive end of the audience reacts. In the new reactions, we're needing to interpret more than ever, and we're rising to the challenge. Consider a face. Where we used to just tag a look with environment, we now know how close the indexing and connections lie. Visuality flips the traditional viewing experience. Where we used to build up to a face, now we strip away. We race to throw out as much as possible but not end with nothing. The hardest part of this new process, as it was in the other direction, may be learning when to pause and pivot action off the reaction. We the audience may be passive, but we can't help noticing how we like the momentum. Consider a face and all it does to make us move.

  • Author unknown

    Lo dice Will Wright

    http://www.elchiguireliterario.com/2008/11/25/lo-dice-will-w...
    44 days ago in El Chigüire Literario » Programación de videojuegos. Tutoriales de programación de juegos. Videojuegos independientes. · Authority: 14

    Misconception about game developers: That they are under-read. People associate games with explosions and guns, but the designers I know are well read and have diverse interests. (Concepción errada de los desarrolladores de juegos: Que no leen suficientemente.  La gente asocia juegos con explosiones y armas, pero los diseñadores que conozco son buenos lectores y tienen intereses diversos) – Will Wright en el NY Times Visita también: Mira los juegos de El Chiguire Literario ¡Oh, juegos originales hechos por venezolanos!

    • Author unknown

      "Misconception about game developers: That they are under-read. People associate games with..."

      http://blog.ciroduran.com/post/61491685
      44 days ago in Grandes Temas en Dos Volúmenes · Authority: 11

      “Misconception about game developers: That they are under-read. People associate games with explosions and guns, but the designers I know are well read and have diverse interests.” - Will Wright

      • Author unknown

        GameSetLinks: Gaming, The Watchmen Way

        http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2008/11/gamesetlinks_gaming_the_...
        45 days ago in GameSetWatch · Authority: 350

        Here's the latest of our - somewhat incrementally better explained - sets of link neatness, headed up by Richard Cobbett unearthing a horrible 3DO FMV adventure given new, slightly 'abandonware'-tastic life by YouTube branching. Also notable: some interesting discussion of the Watchmen episodic game (we shouldn't write it off yet, but the man has some good points), the Far Cry 2 in-game blog we missed, an odd cover version apparently from the upcoming Saboteur, what Will Wright thinks about things, et al. Go stop go: Richard Cobbett > Richard's Online Journal > Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties Oh no, Cobbett unearths and YouTube branching version of the infamously bad 3DO FMV adventure. Click Nothing: '...and let slip the blogs of war!' Interesting, Far Cry 2 supremo Clint Hocking reveals "...for those who never found it, we were maintaining a fictional blog for the character of the journalist Reuben Oluwagembi who you meet in Far Cry 2." Who Botches The Watchmen? » Murderblog 3D Some delicious fun at the expense of the upcoming Watchmen episodic game, which could be good, but I share a little skepticism: 'Quick time events? Combos? Finishing moves? It’s like they distilled Watchmen to it’s very essence.' Sore Thumbs: 'Shit Lit' I can't help linking the Sore Thumbs shenanigans -- this time it's Crispin Boyer criticizing game writing randomly -- because the level of vitriol is still pretty impressive. I dunno - I guess I'm a half-full type of guy. superannuation: 'My contribution to the 24-hour Tumblr-thon of Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel.' ...an odd music video (from the game soundtrack?) with alpha video footage from Pandemic's long in development Saboteur, dug up by the indefatigable Superannuation blogger. Quit your job and make your game - Citizen Gamer- msnbc.com Another nice mainstream 2D Boy piece, with some good news from Kyle Gabler: 'We can finally say that, two years after leaving our jobs, we are better off financially and emotionally than we would have been had we stayed at the same company where we were working.' mbf tod@y: Coming Soon: "The Ethics of Computer Games" by Miguel Sicart (MIT Press) The MIT Press continues to do great serious conceptual looks at games - they're my favorite game book publisher right now. In this upcoming tome: 'Miguel Sicart addresses broader issues about the ethics of games, the ethics of playing the games, and the ethical responsibilities of game designers. He argues that computer games are ethical objects, that computer game players are ethical agents, and that the ethics of computer games should be seen as a complex network of responsibilities and moral duties.' Domains - Will Wright - SimCity Living - Interview - NYTimes.com A mini-profile of Wright as a person, not his product, which is nice. Says Will: 'People associate games with explosions and guns, but the designers I know are well read and have diverse interests.' I think this is increasingly true, which is, of course, increasingly important.

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