Make the jump and you’ll get to the next stage. But if you fluff the event — jump too early and you’ll slam into the adjacent skyscraper, jump too late and you’ll trip over the edge and plummet to your death — it’s game over, forever.
No pressure or anything, right? Still, One Single Life does sound like a thought-provoking – and unbelievably frustrating – art project, if not a game.
(Wired)
Audience Calibration Procedure from Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery on Vimeo.
You had better believe I’m going to be all over this. Très cool.
I guarantee you most 15 or 16 year olds would be so much more interested in The Great Gatsby and its endless droning on about the corruption of the East Coast if they could play it as a sidescroller. And now they can!
(Engadget)
Was anyone else so hooked on the Vancouver 2010 Olympics that they actually watched the closing ceremonies “starring” Avril Lavigne? We were.
(Are you also getting a surprise Olympic Quatchi mascot in the mail soon? Maybe that’s just me.)
Well, if you found yourself tuned into NBC’s coverage last night, you may have noticed the incredible spangly awesomeness that was the “Welcome to Sochi” animation. This thing was a bitch to find on the interweb today, but since I was off sick, I had plenty of time to dig around without mercy.
Success:
And, if you are absolutely smitten with it and would like to see it in much higher resolution, go here and jump to the 4:56 mark (apologies for SilverLight.) To quote one blogger:
Just to make Canada’s sloppiness look bad, we got treated to Glorious Mother Russia coming out to annihilate all of our brains with a precise, choreographed, sensory-overloading preview of Sochi 2014.
Yes. Yes, we did. And I want to be treated again and again. Bring on Sochi!
(Thank you to Mahalo & NBC Olympics)
If you’re curious, the winning search string was “ice cosmonaut ballerina snowboard.” Always a good sign.
It seems that – at least according to Gizmodo’s Mark Wilson – my Apple tablet mouth-frothing might come to an end when my pre-ordered copy of Mass Effect 2 arrives tonight.
We shall see. Right after a trip out for birthday drinks with Karishka…
Chris Garneau – Fireflies from Daniel Stessen on Vimeo.
Because every time it’s out of my head, it finds its way back in. I give up!
As an aside, does anyone notice the striking similarities to the original Zelda (or, as I should call it, my second mother from 1989 onward?)
During a much needed break to read gadget blogs today, I found myself thinking about racing games. No, not because of my recent infatuation with Forza 3. I was actually reading a review of a massive steering wheel and stand combo (verdict: not so great.) This wheel has a Porsche logo on it and the brand purist in me finds it repulsive to think of “driving” an Alfa-Romeo or Ford in the game with a Porsche logo still on the wheel.
Not that you really have time to look down during most races. Right?
And this got me thinking…in a conversation with Kate on iChat:
Me: I want to design a racing game that has commuter challenges.
Get to the Target, the Petco, the post office and back to your office all in a lunch break.
Beat traffic on to the highway before the light.
That sort of thing.
Kate: i’d never play it
too real
Me: I would.
It would be awesome.
You could hit pedestrians.
Ram “competitors.”
Power slide into parking spaces.
Jump speed bumps.
Crash through store fronts.
Basically all the things you wish you could do in reality.
Kate: LOL
ok
i’m won over
Okay, I know this sounds like a weird game concept, but I’d absolutely find this enthralling. (Full disclosure: I played Need for Speed on the PC and would occasionally drive the tracks at the speed limit just because. I also played an entire level of Grand Theft Auto while endeavoring not to damage the Volvo station wagon I had stolen.) You have to admit that it would be far more enjoyable some days to be able to smash the crap out of the other cars you are stuck at an intersection with than it would be to take the checkered flag at Monza in a Ferrari. Who’s with me?
I love when a seemingly pointless technology winds up having a use that far outweighs anything its creators intended. Twitter being used to communicate in a locked down Iran is a perfect example of this. You had better believe that no one thought Iranians would be tweeting a presidential election. Today, Kotaku reports that a game development student in the UK is using The Sims to explore issues of poverty in society. The student, Robin Burkinshaw, has created a father-daughter pair that live in an abandoned lot in her copy of The Sims. She is also using a blog to chronicle the Sims’ lives.
Read: “The Sad Story of Two Homeless Sims” (via Kotaku)
Whether this will make any sort of difference in reality remains to be seen, but it is a fascinating chance to use a game for something more than it was ever expected to be.
For awhile now I’ve been quietly dealing with a nihilistic quality in the very core of myself. Maybe I was consciously aware of its presence and maybe I wasn’t, at least not entirely. This little voice deep down inside has been there, always causing me to negate the value of things I really want to hold valuable. For example, I may think “Man, that is a truly beautiful Mercedes…the lines, the color, the presentation of the design language!” but my personal Nietzche will then counter with “Think of the resources depleted to build it and the money required to buy it…it’s destroying the world! How dare you care!” I get really, really excited about art and design and purpose-built beauty – but then find myself feeling guilty because of the impracticality of these things, or the attention they may draw away from what I perceive to be bigger concerns.
Of course, some things fall outside of this sphere. Love, friendship, family, humor, sadness, sex, achievement and learning are just a few “pure” elements that cannot fall victim to my analytical dissection. They do, though, occasionally get lost in the silt clouds as I muddy the waters with near-constant mental struggles.
How sad, right? How utterly ridiculous…how arrogant to think that it’s my sworn duty to worry about “the BIG picture” at all times.
Well, enough is enough. I can’t be rid of my nihilism – indeed, I think it’s probably one of my most important characteristics, one that creates a tension that’s extraordinarily valuable for viewing my world – but I can decide that some things are worthy of passionate exploration, devotion and interest. I think I’m going to start listing these things as they come to me and I’m not going to allow myself to question them.
Today’s items that matter are:
Since I’m at work, I should probably stop and, you know…work. But, this list had to come out this morning while it was still fresh and felt important.
Frankly, I feel better already. 🙂
…Nick gave us a new blog post. There was much celebration and feasting. (Really, it was a pretty kick ass time.)
Similarly, Hoover’s was all kinds of enjoyable. It may have taken Lindsie and I forever to actually get there (her moreso than myself), but it was well worth the journey. Dusty has a stupendously embarassing video of me playing Wii boxing. I’ve not seen it yet, but I have a feeling it’s going to be linked soon. And I’m paying the price for said video with an entire body of sore muscles. Freaking Nintendo…disguising exercise as gaming! WarioWare with Lindsie was guaranteed hilarity and just being with everyone was great fun. We were obnoxious and loud everywhere we went, just as it should have been. I’m really excited to have everyone down when winter goes away so we can have a weekend at the beach. And probably lots of drinks since that’s what we do. Hoover, you are packing the Wii for maximum entertainment…Dusty, you bring the whiskey. I’ll have blankets, I swear…
Tonight is Of Montreal! Yay-ness. Dusty is confident that the snow is going to relent before our intended departure time and I’m hoping this is correct. Amanda and Brent are traveling along tonight, too, which is very exciting. Keep your fingers crossed that all goes well.