Happy Halloween!

Statshot(s)

A look at the graphs that shape your world.

(Courtesy Graphjam)






Your ability to enjoy this movie depends entirely on your ability—once the big SF Plot Element is revealed—to accept that the movie isn't regular drama but is, in fact, SF Lite and raise your suspension of disbelief accordingly.



Seriously. I think video game graphics peaked with HL2. Everything since has just been unnecessary bling.



No, really. Am I? Because from a sheer spending viewpoint, apparently for me dead cats rate WAAAAAY above people in tsunami-prone and earthquake-stricken third-world nations.

Sandbox

How to tell when you've written a flexible game:


Yo dawg, I heard you like computers, so I put a computer in your game so you can compute while you game.

When your game's physics engine supports building an ALU. This means that, theoretically, you could write the game within itself.

Learn more about the Minecraft phenomenon here:
Wikipedia.
Penny Arcade: Mine All Mine, Part 1 and Part 2.
Experienced Points: Mine All Minecraft.
Minecraft developer forming his own studio.
Minecraft allows you to set fire to your house.

Other things built in Minecraft:
A rollercoaster;
A giant waterslide;
Doom E1M1;
Notre Dame cathedral;
The Reichstag;
The Empire State Building;
A 1x1 scale model of the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D);
The Earth (not full scale, although theoretically the game's engine would allow it);

I haven't actually played the game yet. I'm kind of scared to try it.

SPM3DOF is under development...

...as an MMO.





Stay tuned.

Also,

THIS THIS THIS THIS!



A THOUSAND TIMES, THIS!

I hate all of you

This trailer has been out for THREE DAYS and NONE of you bothered to tell me about it!



Y'know, it's only my second-favorite Narnia book.

You monster.

(Which reminds me of another trailer....)

For realz?

Dear Telltale,

Please find enclosed my second- and third-born children.

Love and kisses,
Joe

P.S. I can has Full Throttle?

"Video Games Can Never Be Art..."

...boldly proclaims Roger Ebert.

Many people (gamers, mostly), including Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, Shamus Young, a game designer named Kellee Santiago, and an author named Robert Brockway have taken him to task.

My take on it:

Can images be art?

Yes, images can be art.

Can music be art?

Yes, music can be art.

Can story be art?

Yes, story can be art.

Can acting be art?

Yes, acting can be art.

Can sculpture be art?

Yes, sculpture can be art.

Can the combination of all of these be art?

Yes, the combination of all of these can be art.

So then, on what grounds can one state that the combination of all of these, with the inclusion of interactivity is not and can never be art?

Basically, if A is art and B is art and C is art and D is art and E is art and the combination A + B + C + D + E is art, how can A + B + C + D + E + F not ever be art?

Also, what do you mean by "art"?

* * *

Since it seems to be popular these days, a brief list of games I think are art:

1) Grim Fandango

2) Braid

3) Half-Life 2

Why do I think these are art? To answer Roger Ebert, all three caused me to be "more complex, thoughtful, insightful, witty, empathetic, intelligent, or philosophical."

My Head Asplode.

This commercial caused my brain to crash.

After it rebooted, all I could think was "fuh?" followed by "buh?" and finally "wuh?"

Why are there Pringles in Silent Hill? What's Lara Croft doing in Silent Hill? Why is she carrying a blow dryer, a spatula, a tape measure, a tennis racket, and a feather duster? Why does she have a Rubik's Cube in her bra? Why, dear lord, WHY?

(Why does she look like she's about 16 years old?)

Forced to ponder so many imponderables, forced to piece together so many disparate pieces, my feeble brain is forced to come to one inescapable conclusion: Brain made this commercial. Yes, who else but the World's Smartest Mouse, who else by the power behind the plot to build the world's largest clothes dryer and entrap everyone in static cling, could come up with such a fiendishly confusing commercial. I'm sure his plan looks something like this:

1) Confuse the world's gamers with a commercial of utter bizarre-ness.

2) In the ensuing chaos, TAKE OVER THE WORLD!

The Ultimate Game

Recipe: combine equal parts Procedural Galaxy Generator, Procedural Planet Generator, Procedural City Generator, Flight Simulator, and pretty much any first-person game, and you have The Ultimate Timesuck.

Because All the Cool Kids Linked it a Long Time Ago.

World of Goo

Download it. Play it. Enjoy.

(Don't say I never did anything for you.)

For Those Who Need a Good MST3K Fix.

Consider Unskippable, over at The Escapist, where they do the same thing for video game cutscenes.

Here's their first entry.

It starts slow, but I lost it shortly after the six-minute mark.

It just keeps getting better.

First, Telltale Games brings Sam & Max back from the dead.

Then, they announce they're making a game based on Homestarrunner.com.

Now this?!?!?!

I swear, they couldn't be a cooler company if they were marinated in awesome sauce and baked at 1337°.

Next, they'll be announcing that they're making a Firefly game, to coincide with the release of a sequel.

*Crosses fingers*

Intelligent Design Confirmed!
Now you too can intelligently design your own creatures!

Ok, first things first. If you haven't already done so, download the Spore Creature Creator here (it's free). Go ahead. I'll wait. This blog post isn't going anywhere. It'll still be here when you get back. Come on, why are you still reading this and not downloading? No excuses, go download it.

Mmkay, all set? Good. You can finish reading this while it downloads. I just had a few short thoughts to share.

1) This demo is giving EA/Maxis the type of publicity money can't buy. Three of the top gaming webcomics have all mentioned the creature creator since it dropped (Penny Arcade, PvP, Ctrl+Alt+Del), some of them posting images of creatures from their comics that had been recreated using the creator. That and the incredibly fun and creative nature of this demo make sure Spore will sell when it launches this fall, heinous DRM aside.

2) From a programming perspective, this is amazing. What Maxis has essentially done is create a dumbed-down version of 3D Studio Max that anyone can use easily, then made a completely automated Maya, that procedurally animates whatever you build. The fact that the program can even figure out how to animate a 5-legged creature walking is incredible.

3) Also brilliant is the fact that your creature's save files are simply png images. They used the hidden layers of the images to store all the creation information. This makes it incredibly easy to share creature with your friends. All you need to do is send them the image of your creature, and they can just drag and drop it into the creator to duplicate it on their end. Also, if you have a website on which you can post .png images, you simply post pictures of your creatures to share them with others.

4) The thing is easy-to-use, addictive, and most of all FUN! The Murloc and I have spent most of the weekend creating all sorts of creatures. (She was having so much fun, in fact, that she broke down and purchased the full version (only $10).) Here are a few samples of mine:



You really don't have to have any ideas for what you want to build when you start. Whenever I do start building with something in mind, what comes out is something completely different, but no less creative. Things just take on a life of their own.

And just when you thought life couldn't get any better

I mean seriously I had Sam & Max Seasons 1 and 2, I have a years subscription to Rush 24/7, I got the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles volumes 1 and 2 and volume 3 pre-ordered. I've got everything I could ever want to occupy those 10 minutes a day I'm not working or playing with Hannah on the beach, and then God throws this at me as if to say "Hey, Mr. Attractive Man over there playing with your little Honey Baked Hannah on the beach, here's something to fill hours 25 and 26 of every day for the next 11 years this decade." It's almost as though God is promising to expand the number of hours in a day.

Human Tetris.



Also,

Human Pong
Human Space Invaders
Human Pole Position

(Yes, yes, I know: Old news. You saw this ages ago. Your mom forwarded you the link last summer and it was old then, etc. Look, it’s new it to me, so there.)